Behind us the guard blew his whistle. I got into the carriage and leaned from the window. She said: "Thank you for telling me, sir."

She had very little to be thankful for, poor kid. The train began to move. I said: "Try not to tell anybody. I know it's going to be hard, but-try."

She said: "I won't tell a soul. Thank-thank you ever so much, sir." Then I was sliding away from her down the platform, and she was standing there, with tears beginning to run down her face, in the crowd and the smoke and the steam. I sank down into my seat, thanking God that that was over.

I got to London at about nine o'clock and went straight to the Admiralty. V.A.C.O. was there, and I told him the story, and then we telephoned McNeil and got him to come over. We had a long talk over it that night, but there was nothing we could do.

"I'll probably get some kind of a report tomorrow," said the brigadier at last, "-from the other side. We'll know how things stand then."

Chapter 10.

BUT no report came through. We waited on, day after day, for news from Douarnenez, and nothing came at all. We got a message from the other side about the damaged destroyer at Brest; it only told us what we knew already from air photographs. There was no news of Genevieve or her crew, and for some reason that I didn't clearly understand McNeil could not ask for any. "We've just got to wait," he said. "We'll get a message before long."

But when we did hear something, it was from quite a different source.

It came from the Casualties Section. They rang me up about midday on November the 7th, a week after the action. "Is that Commander Martin?"

"Speaking," I said.

"That party of yours, that we notified as missing. One of them has turned up-a lieutenant R.N.R. named Colvin. He was one of them, wasn't he?"

"He's one of them," I said. "Is he alive?"

"Oh, yes-at least, he was alive when he was brought in. He was brought into Portsmouth this morning in an A/S trawler. He's in Haslar Hospital now suffering from exposure."

I said: "Where did the trawler find him?"

"He was in a boat, quite a small boat, so they said. Drifting about some ten miles south of St. Catherine's. They said he seemed to have been in it a long time. He was only just conscious, or not conscious at all. Of course, it's been very cold these last few nights."

"I know," I said. I paused. "Was he alone in the boat?"

"Yes, quite alone."

"Thanks for telling me," I said. "I'll get through to Haslar." It is about two hundred and thirty sea miles from the Iroise to St. Catherine's. We had had half a gale most of the week, and it had certainly been very cold. I rang up Haslar Hospital and spoke to the surgeon-commander.

"I'd really rather that you didn't come today," he said. "He's sleeping naturally now. He'll have a bad time when he wakes up, but I think he'll be all right. He seems to be a man with a good constitution, but he isn't a young man by any means."

"I know," I said. "What about tomorrow morning?"

"I think that should be all right, if you don't stay too long. Half an hour at the most."

"I'll come down then," I said.

I went down next day to Portsmouth and over to Haslar by the ferry. I went through to the officers' block in the garden quadrangle, bleak and with a little snow lying upon the rosebeds. I found Colvin propped up in a clean white bed in a cabin to himself. He looked grey and old, and smaller than the strapping chap that I remembered from a week before.

"Say," he said, "it's real nice of you to come down, sir. We got shot up and sunk. I guess you heard about that from the M.G.B. boys."

"I was very sorry to hear it," I said. "How did it happen?"

He said: "It was this way."

They had gone creeping into the Iroise at about 21.30, without lights, slowly and as quietly as they could. It was a clear, calm night with very little cloud; the moon was not yet up, but there was fairly good visibility under the stars. It was a bad night for them; they realized that from the start, but they went through with it according to the plan.

They had intended to anchor in the Anse des Blancs Sablons three miles north of Cap de la Chevre before zero hour at 23.00 and let the scattered vessels of the fishing fleet come to them there. They changed that plan when the extreme visibility of the night was revealed. It was too risky for them to approach the coast alone; they would certainly be seen by the shore patrols. Instead, they hung about in the Iroise six or seven miles out to sea, waiting for the diversion that the M.G.B.s would make.

Five miles to the south of them they could distinctly see the lights of the fishing fleet clustered about the Raz. It was risky for them, waiting there like that; after the attacks that they had made on Raumboote an isolated fishing vessel in those parts would have drawn immediate suspicion. They waited for an hour, stemming the tide with the engine turning over slowly, tensely watching the horizon for the first sign of a ship. But their luck held for the time, and nothing came to worry them.

Exactly at 23.00 the show started, down to the south by the fishing fleet. They saw the tracer-bullets flying through the sky and heard the crash and rumble of the depth-charges; immediately every light went out. The firing only lasted for about three minutes; searchlights came on and began to sweep the sea. Once or twice a beam passed over them but did not hold them; several times, away to the south-east, they saw fishing vessels caught and held in the white light. Some of these were heading to the north towards them, and some back to the east towards Douarnenez. In a quarter of an hour the fleet was scattered all over the Iroise, and the moon was just coming up over the hill.

They went forward then and began to close the coast. When they had come within about four miles of the rendezvous a searchlight caught and held them; they went on steadily, each man inwardly terrified and miserable. It held them for the best part of a minute; then travelled on and immediately they saw another fishing vessel outlined in the beam. She was half a mile inshore and travelling upon a northerly, converging course with them. Presently the searchlight, hunting for the enemy, picked up another one.

They held their course towards the Anse des Blancs Sablons, and twice more they were caught and held in the white, blinding light. It must have been clear to the German searchlight crews by this time that a number of the fishing vessels scattered over the Iroise were making for the Anse, and Genevieve went in with the crowd. Presently the searchlight ceased to bear, and they rounded up in the Anse at about five minutes to midnight.

Seven other vessels were there to meet them, as had been arranged; in the pale moonlight all the eight of them were as like as peas. They lay together in a cluster about half a mile from the white beach, manoeuvring about and shouting from boat to boat. Presently one of them came alongside Genevieve and made fast to her with warps; they lay grinding the fenders and the work of passing out the cases was begun. Later on another came up on the other beam.

Several of the Breton fishermen came on board. Colvin saw Simon talking to an old man from the first boat. "Chummy, they were, sir," he said. "Like as if they'd met before some place. I'd say he was the one that Simon fixed up with that time he went into Douarnenez."

"Bozallec," I said.

"Aye. That was the name."

It took much longer than they had estimated to tranship the guns and ammunition. It might have been easier had they anchored Genevieve and let the others come along side one by one. Colvin said they had not done that because they were certainly under constant observation from the shore, and a successive manoeuvre of that sort would have roused suspicion. Instead they kept under way the whole time, stemming the tide that streamed up from the south. The fishing vessels were unhandy in a close manoeuvre of that sort; there was much bumping and boring, and long delays while circling for position. The effect from shore was probably one of clumsy, innocent confusion, but it was about 01.50 before the last case had been passed and the last gulp of sour red wine drunk to seal the ceremony.

By then the moon was well up; on the calm water it was very light indeed. It would not do for one ship to strike out alone towards the west while the others turned south and eastwards round La Chevre for home. The Bretons saw that well enough and were prepared to accompany Genevieve till she was off the land. They all left the Anse des Blancs Sablons together heading about south-west, as if returning to the Raz to go on fishing.

"Captain Simon, he was well in with them, sir," said Colvin. 'They'd have done anything for him, they would."

The eight vessels passed outside the Bouc. It seemed then that they had gone far enough together; there was a good deal of shouting from boat to boat, and then Genevieve altered course to west and went on out towards the Atlantic and safety, towards Dartmouth and home.

Ten minutes after they had left the other boats a searchlight blazed out dead ahead of them, not half a mile away, and held them in its glare.

"Properly caught, we were," said Colvin grimly.

Blinded by the light, they could only see the bulk of the vessel. It was obvious from the height of the light that she was something much bigger than a Raumboot. She began flashing at them with a signal-lamp. There was nothing they could do but to hold straight on and try to bluff it out as stupid Breton seamen. As the vessels drew together they prepared for their last action.

All that this preparation could amount to was that Rhodes slipped into the control seat of the flame-thrower and checked his pressures. They could not man the Bren-guns or the Tommy-guns till action had commenced; their deck was flooded with white light and any preparation of that sort would have given them away at once. The Bretons played up well under Simon's guidance. The gunners stood nonchalantly, hands in pockets, cigarette in mouth, staring at the bulk of the destroyer as the vessels closed. They must have looked very like a fishing crew.

They did not answer the flashing signal-lamp; that was not in the part. In a real fishing vessel nobody would know how to read Morse. They just held on towards the enemy, and presently they were lying stopped alongside, about thirty yards away from her, opposite the bridge. She towered above them. She was only a small destroyer, somewhat similar to our V class, but to them she was immense.

The officer of the watch hailed them in bad French through a megaphone. "What ship is that? Where are you from?"

Rollot, the maitre, was standing by Simon at the entrance to the little wheel-house. They whispered quickly together. Then Rollot called out in rich Breton dialect: "Fishing-boat Marie et Pierre, from Douarnenez. We left the fleet and came out here because of the firing."

There was a pause. Then: "Come in closer and take a line and come alongside." It was very calm. "I shall send an officer on board you."

Simon turned to Colvin in the wheel-house and translated quickly. "This is the end of it," he said. "Shall we give in to them, or shall we fight it out?"

Colvin said: "I guess we'd better fight it out. The boys would like it better that way. Can Rhodes get his fire down to the stern from here?"

"No. It is too far."

"Well, let him take the bow gun and the bridge in the first place 'n then train aft. I'll see if I can work her down that way to help him."

From the destroyer a voice cried impatiently: "Come alongside, or we open fire on you."

Simon bent to the speaking-tube. "Rhodes, fire at the bow gun and then the bridge, and then work down the decks towards the stern. We shall go slow ahead. Fire quickly now as soon as you are ready."

The young man said: "Very good, sir." Their gun drill was never very formal in that ship.

The fire burst out and lit up the destroyer brilliantly. The jet curved lazily towards the A gun's crew, landed amongst them and enveloped them in flame. A great fire rose up from the forecastle of the destroyer immediately; they must have had cordite charges open for loading.

From the wing of the bridge a machine-gun opened fire on them. They replied with Bren and Tommy gunfire, and the flame jet traveled slowly to the bridge. That machine-gun ceased to fire abruptly, but another opened up upon them from the waist of the destroyer and began to spray them. The flame paused upon the bridge, and then began to work along her length towards the gun. There was a sudden clang of gongs, and screams, and shouted orders.

The ships were lying bow to stern side by side. Colvin put on full power to go ahead towards the stern of the destroyer. He turned to Simon. "We want to get that flame to bear on their aft gun quick as we can," he said. "Tell Rhodes."

If they had managed to do that, if they had burnt the Z gun's crew as they had burnt the A gun's, I believe they might have got away with it. The destroyer then would have had nothing but small arms and machine-guns to fight them with, unless perhaps some A/A cannon. But as it worked out, they never got the aft gun. As they went ahead she went astern; she gained speed more quickly than they did and her stern kept well out of range of their fire.

Then the Germans opened fire with their stern gun, probably about a four-inch gun, loaded H.E. There was never any doubt about it after that. The range was only about two hundred yards. The first shell pitched over them and burst behind. The second was a direct hit somewhere near the bow, and the ship disintegrated.

"She just came to pieces, sir," Colvin said. "One minute she was there all right, and next thing that I knew there was a sort of flash and all the planks and timbers were all separate, and we were in the water."

He thought there was a third shell, but he was not sure of that. He did not know how he got into the water; probably he was blown clean out of the wheel-house. All he knew was that he was in the water ten or fifteen yards from the wreckage that had been Genevieve, and that there was nobody else near him.

"That happened at two-sixteen in the morning," he said carefully. "I know that must have been the tune, because my watch stopped, because the water got in it. And it said two-sixteen."

I nodded. "That agrees with what the M.G.B.s reported," I said. He had been talking for a quarter of an hour, and I wanted the whole story, if possible, before I was turned out. "What happened next?"

He turned his head wearily and nervously upon the pillow. "It's on the chest-of-drawers there with them other things," he said. "The watch." His eyes were turned to a small pile of personal belongings, grey with salt. "Could you get it for me?"

I got up and gave it to him. It was a silver pocket watch with a very big white dial. There was still water inside the glass. He took it gratefully.

"What happened next?" I asked again.

He said: "I'll tell you." And then his eyes dropped to the watch in his hand. "I was wondering, would you do something for me, sir? It's had the water in it for a week now, 'n I wouldn't like to think that it'd never go again. Would you take it up to London to be cleaned? It was given me by somebody I thought a lot of one time."

"Of course I will," I said. "I'll take it up this afternoon and get it seen to right away."

He gave it to me gratefully. "You can see where it says on the back," he murmured in a burst of confidence. "'Jack Colvin from Junie, September 17th, 1935.' That's what it says, isn't it?"

I glanced at the engraving. "That's right," I said. I slipped it into my pocket. "I'll get it put right for you.

"What happened after that?" I asked for the third time.

He said that he had begun to swim away from the wreckage. That was panic-instinct-call it what you like. There was a lot of light from the fires in the destroyer and from her searchlight, and he wanted nothing more than to get out of it. It was only when he had swum furiously and blindly for a hundred yards or so that he regained his senses. What brought him to himself was M.G.B. 268, which passed within a few yards of him after dropping her depth-charges at the bow of the destroyer.

He saw her bearing down on him, and saw the great wave of her wash sweeping towards him. In a quick glance around before he went down in the wash he saw the men upon the M.G.B. quite close to him as she swept past at forty knots. He saw the upturned keel of Genevieve with two men on it firing with a Tommy-gun. He did not know who they were.

He saw the shapes of fishing vessels in the background half a mile or more away. Then the wash came to him and he was smothered by it, clutched and spun round under water by the swirl, and thrown up gasping to the surface. He threw himself on his back for the concussion; immediately the depth-charges went off by the destroyer not more than two hundred yards away, and a great mass of water came down on him, carrying him under again.

He had his inflated life-belt on, his Mae West, as they all had; otherwise he would certainly have been drowned. But presently he came up to the surface, feebly spluttering and gasping, and it was now much darker, for the searchlight had gone out. He lay floating and winded, supported by the Mae West and recovering his senses, for perhaps ten minutes.

And presently it seemed to him that he was farther from the scene. He was farther from the destroyer. Probably she then had stern way on her to ease the forward bulkheads; in any case, she was much farther off. He could see the coast clearly in the moonlight between La Chevre and the Anse de Dinant; it was not more than two miles away. The tide was still carrying him northwards, and would be for another two hours; from his recollection of the tidal streams he knew that it would sweep him closer to the land as it filled up into the Rade de Brest.

And with that his guts came back to him. "I didn't fancy swimming to them fishing-boats," he said. "I reckoned if the Germans got any of us we'd be scuppered out of hand, with having put the flame on them and that." It seemed to him that he could reach the coast quite easily on that calm, moonlit night. So he began to swim.

He said that the water was not very cold, although it was November. He was in the flood-tide up from the Bay of Biscay for one thing, and that was likely to be fairly warm. He was a strong swimmer. "Living in Oakland, like I did," he said, "we used to spend a lot of time down on the beach. Besides, I been swimming all my life, one place or another. It wasn't nothing, that."

And so he swam for shore.

The tide bore him northwards faster than he swam, hampered as he was with his clothes and his Mae West. He kept his clothes on for their warmth, even in water, and because he knew that he would want them when he got on shore. He finally landed, after being in the water for about two hours, in a little rocky cove just north of Anse de Dinant, under the shadow of the island rocks that they call Tas de Pois. That must have been at about four or four-thirty in the morning. Immediately he got out of the water he began to feel the cold.

The moon was still high in the sky, flooding the coast with light. Because he was so cold he began to clamber along the rocks looking for a way up the cliff. The cliffs in this part of Brittany are usually very high and rugged; where he landed he had to climb nearly two hundred feet before he got on level ground. Oddly enough, this gave him confidence to go on. "I knew there wouldn't be none of them minefields top of a place like that," he said. "There wasn't even any barbed wire." The Germans do not waste material in the defence of places which can never be invaded. Simon had found the same when he climbed up the cliffs near Goulin.

He found his way up the cliff at last, and wormed his way cautiously forward over the bare, short grass. He knew just where he was; from long study of the chart he held every feature of the coast firm in his memory. He was about two miles due south of the little fishing village of Camaret; he was on a small peninsula jutting westwards from the big peninsula between the Rade de Brest and the Bay of Douarnenez. The land that he was on was covered with heather, with occasional clumps of gorse and bracken. There were no trees.

Very soon he came to a footpath, well worn, running through the heather parallel with the cliff. He crossed it and went on away from the sea, still crawling on his hands and knees. The moonlight was still so bright that he was afraid to stand up; in that bare country he felt that he would be visible a mile away. When he had passed the footpath by about twenty yards he heard the tramp of feet; he curled up and lay still among the heather. A German soldier came in sight, marching along in tin-hat, his rifle slung over his shoulder. He was an oldish man, with rather a slovenly appearance. He went straight down the path, looking neither to the left nor the right. After a time Colvin crawled on again.

He went on for the best part of a mile, crawling all the way because of the lack of cover. This was not a bad thing, as it happened, because the effort and the use of his limbs that it entailed made him warm; his arms and legs regained their normal feeling and his clothes began to dry upon him. He had let the air out of his Mae West, but still wore it for warmth.

Presently, in the first light of dawn, he came to a stone wall dividing the moor from fields. He reached up cautiously and-looked over, and found that be was looking down into the village of Camaret, a mile to the north of him. In the grey light he could see the entrance to the Rade de Brest beyond, and beyond that again the rocky coast of the north part of Brittany.

"I didn't know what was best to do," he said, fingering the sheet. "It seemed to me that I was in a jam."

On that peninsula it was dangerous to go crawling about in broad daylight with no plan. There was a big clump of bracken growing up against the wall not very far away. He made for this and crawled into the middle of it and lay down, safe from any observation but from the air. And lying there he set to work to make a plan.

He had no need for any further survey of the country; he knew exactly where he was. As he crawled there had been growing in his mind the idea that if he could get on to the north coast of Brittany, the south coast of the English Channel, some opportunity might arise for getting back to England. He might somehow get a boat; he might even make a raft and try to blow back on the south-west wind. In any case, the north coast was where he ought to be.

He had a terribly long way to go to get there, seventy or eighty miles, perhaps. He would have to travel eastwards on the peninsula inland into France for twenty miles or so in order to get round the Rade de Brest; after that he would have to turn north. He did not know the country or the people. He knew that the main German concentrations were usually held a few miles inland from the coast; that meant that the farther inland that he went the greater would be the risk of being taken by the Germans.

From that point of view, and because he was a seaman and had memorized the charts, he longed to stay by the coast. He felt safe there; he had knowledge of conditions and localities; the inland parts were unknown, strange, and hazardous. He thought longingly of the north part of Brittany to the west and north-west of Brest, that was in sight across the sea. If he could get there he could go on round the coast until he found what he was looking for, a means of getting back to England. On the coast he would know what he was doing.

It was only just across the way, that part of Brittany. Could be possibly... get there?

It meant swimming again, of course. He concentrated his mind upon the chart and on the tidal streams. It must, he thought, be about five miles across the entrance to the Rade. It was November, and resting motionless in the grey dawn he was beginning to get very cold again. The thought of going into the sea once more was an appalling one. He had just swum about two miles in two hours, and he felt now that he had nearly died of it. Another five hours might well mean the end of everything for him.

But it wasn't so bad as that. If he picked his time right, the tidal stream that swept north-eastwards in from the Iroise to fill the Rade de Brest would carry him along; it would be pretty well behind him. It ran from two to two and a half knots, that stream did. That would reduce the time a great deal. In theory he would be in the water for no more than two hours; in practice it would probably be three. That made it possible, perhaps.

He would have to enter the water about midnight, by his reckoning, if he were to take the tide up with him in that way.

"I didn't see what else there was to do, sir," he remarked. "I reckoned that the Germans would shoot me if they got me, 'n I thought I might as well die swimming as that."

He grew very cold and hungry, lying in the bracken. He slept a little, fitfully, from time to time; in his long waking hours his mind became increasingly filled with thoughts of food. And what he thought about was American food, clam chowder that Junie made out of a tin, and waffles that Junie made on the electric cooker in the little kitchen of their Oakland apartment. And Junie herself, in a clean print frock on a warm day... Junie, who was seven thousand miles away from him in distance and two years in time.