THEY DID NOT ENTER the nearest gate to the docks, but went past with the captain and walked about half a mile across the ruined city to the outer harbor. It was easy to see why. The inner harbor was full of sunken wrecks, masts sticking from the water, vessels capsized in the mud—a British destroyer with half the stern blown off, a couple of French frigates, sticking up at strange angles; merchant ships; tugs; fishing boats, most of them badly damaged. Eventually they reached a destroyed lock to an inner basin. Here a German sentry held them up, glanced with indifference at their papers, and allowed them to pass across a plank to the maritime station where the daily cross-Channel steamers from Dover had once docked.
The station itself was flattened, and they had to climb over a pile of masonry, then creep around huge shell holes, and so along the quay to the seaward end, where six small trawlers were berthed. The captain jumped heavily down to the deck of the third, with no question from the German sentries pacing back and forth. The two Englishmen and the dog followed. The vessel had a name on the stern: Marie-Louise, Calais.
The captain stood on the deck bellowing, “Léon. Allô, Léon.”
Instantly a grimy figure in a blue-denim coverall stuck his head up from below. His face was covered with black grease; evidently he had been working on the engine. With a malevolent glance he surveyed the two strangers and the dog as the captain descended the companionway.
Several minutes later his head reappeared and he beckoned them down. The boat was divided into wooden compartments for the fish, with a winch for hauling the nets. The cabin house up front had a kind of wardroom underneath, with a couple of bunks and a small stove. The engines were forward. To make the Britishers more like sailors, the captain ordered them to put on the greasy coveralls that Léon, somewhat grudgingly, produced. Their smocks were dirtied, and they began to look the parts they were to play.
Sending them on deck, the captain and Léon turned to the engines. As they emerged, the dog greeted them with delight, barking furiously. Glancing about, they observed there was activity on every trawler.
The Sergeant had learned patience the hard way over years in the army. Yet this final wait as the vessels got ready to leave was hardest of all. Hidden in Madame Bonnet’s loft at the farm, he had only wanted to be on the way, somewhere, anywhere German patrols were not passing by continually day and night. Now, on the Marie-Louise, he could hardly force himself to lean back, relaxed, and wait. It was as difficult a thing as he had ever done.
“Aha! I knew all this was far too easy,” said Fingers quietly. The Sergeant, perched on a bollard, turned. A German patrol was examining the nearest vessel, tromping below to be sure nobody was hidden away, then reappearing to check the crew lined up on deck.
From the cabin came the spluttering of their engines. Other trawlers were starting up too, getting ready to cast off when passed by the German security. The patrol—an officer, a non-com with an automatic, and two armed soldiers—stepped from the next boat and came toward them. They jumped onto the deck of the Marie-Louise.
What they saw as they boarded her was the usual French sailor in a dirty smock, arms folded, sitting on a bollard with a brown-and-black dog at his feet. Another in an equally dingy costume lounged on the rail, the tiniest butt of a cigarette between his teeth. Both badly needed a shave.
The German officer looked at them with contempt and shouted, “Kapitän.”
The head of the captain immediately appeared in the companionway. He stumbled up on deck, a spanner in one hand, mumbling something and saluting the officer in a negligent manner. The greeting was not precisely derisive but almost.
The German stepped over and shouted below, “Hinauf.”
Léon, covered with grease, came slowly and sullenly up on deck. The captain ranged them in line as the German strode over, took his identity card, slapped it open, closed it with a glance, and reached for the Sergeant’s. The test was over in one breath, the card was handed back, then Léon’s, and finally Fingers’—all returned by the German with rather a regretful air. Next, followed by Léon and the captain, he went below.
Unable to sit still, the Sergeant rose and began unrolling a large fishing net, as they were doing in the adjoining trawler. Fingers joined him.
“It’s being so cheerful,” he said in his ear, “as keeps me going. But this, I dunno....”
The Germans could be heard below, poking about in the lockers, turning over the bunks, thumping the sides of the cabin in a search for stowaways. Then came a conversation, which became an argument and degenerated into a dispute. From above they could catch occasional words and phrases, enough for them to realize that the Marie-Louise was shipping an extra hand. Apparently the officer was demanding the reason, apparently unsatisfied with the answer.
At last they all appeared on deck, talking, arguing, the captain rubbing his shoulder. He leaned down, grasping the net, going through an eloquent pantomime to indicate that he was unable to use his right arm. Up ahead, one of the trawlers was casting off, her engine churning gently, and the Sergeant observed her moving into mid-channel, soon followed by another vessel, and a third.
The captain, with that peculiar talent of the French for creating a scene on any issue, was shouting violently at the German, who kept stubbornly shaking his head. He was obviously refusing permission to leave with a crew of three. Such were his orders, they could not be broken.
The Sergeant had a picture of Fingers, rowing alone across the Channel, or himself, alone in a dory. By this time every trawler save theirs had slipped away from the jetty. At last, weary of the discussion, the German snatched at their identity cards and jumped up to the pier, followed by the non-com, evidently to consult a superior.
The Sergeant understood the problem. One man could never row that heavy dory alone. So there stood the captain, feet apart, shaking his head and declaring he was suffering from arthritis, that he would not leave short of hands. No, he would never....
“Ah, par exemple... non... je ne peux pas... peux... pas... impossible... imp... poss... ible....”
The whole thing was a terrific act. The Sergeant felt he might well have saved it for the German security officer, now vanishing down the end of the pier, and not wasted it on the two immobile soldiers in the stern. However, like so many French, once he got wound up he was unable to stop. It was this flow of language which gave validity to the scene.
Finally, after an eternal wait, the German officer could be seen down the quay. He came toward the vessel, the non-com several paces to the rear. Reaching the trawler, he sent the two soldiers off the boat with a wave of his hand, turned to the captain, and ordered him to line up the crew.
“Léon,” bawled the captain down the companionway. The set of his head showed that he was elated at having won an argument with a German, even in a good cause, and even if he was risking his life.
Scowling as usual, Léon appeared on deck.
The German officer, carrying a large book, took their identity cards and checked off each name as he called them out. Then he entered them in the book.
“Le Capitaine, Guiscard, Paul.” He handed over his papers.
“Georges, Léon, Contremaître.”
“Grandchamps, Émile-Louis, matelot.”
“Dubois, Jean-Phillipe.”
Then, shutting the book, he turned to the captain and declared in bad French that his trawler would be carefully checked the next morning on return.
The captain was mollified. “Bon. Compris!” Next he turned his back on the German and addressed his quartermaster. “Léon. Vite. Léon, depêches-toi. Le moteur....”
Léon, quite unhurried and as surly as ever, sauntered below, making a face at the back of the German climbing to the pier with his non-com. The Englishmen stood ready to haul in the lines fore and aft. The engine spluttered, roared. The captain, from the pilothouse, gave an order into the speaking tube, and a dock worker on the pier threw off the lines as the boat glided ever so gently away from the stone jetty. In several minutes they were moving down the outer harbor, taking their place at the end of the line of trawlers moving out to sea.
The wind had died away, a good sign. The summer night cast a magic over the water, the sky ahead was golden, the Channel a mirror. Faint columns of smoke still rose from the smoldering town, making a kind of pattern above the shore line.
The Sergeant leaned over the rail, the dog beside him. Good-by, France. Good-by, Monsieur the veterinary. Good-by, Gisèle. Good-by until we meet again. As we surely shall.
Now they were leaving the breakwater, bombed half to pieces, then out of the harbor mouth. There, directly ahead, plain and sharp in the evening light, were the cliffs of Dover, with the town nestling along the water. He could almost see the streets, the houses.
“Look back, Sarge, I think we’re being followed.”
He swung quickly around. There was the roar of a Daimler engine, and a German Schnellboot, or E-boat, a fast seventeen-foot torpedo boat, capable of eighteen knots, raced up the column of slow-moving trawlers, sending an enormous cloud of spray from her pointed bow. She took her place at the head of the file and led them out into the open sea.
“This isn’t going to be so easy, Sarge,” said Fingers.