might simply be too frightened to move. He could see the glare of a gun barrel on the wood almost a yard away from the outstretched arm of one of the bodies. It was perhaps twelve feet from the hatch beside which he lay. If anyone else reached it and started firing, the Germans would torpedo the ship, and they would all go down.
He started to move sideways, quickly, around the casing and onto the open deck. Before he got as far as the gun he stood up, aimed a kick with his right foot, and sent the gun over the side. It fell into the water with a plop. He held both hands up high. “The gun’s gone!” he called out, more to the U-boat than his own captain. “It’s over the side!”
Silence again, except for the wind and the slap of the waves.
“Thank you,” the captain said quietly, then he turned back to the U-boat. “I’m coming!” He climbed over the rail and started down. “Good luck!” he said gravely. “There are compasses on the boat. Go northwest.” And the next moment he was gone.
The other crewmen appeared, only shadows. One of them held his arm awkwardly as if it were injured. They were indistinguishable one from another in the darkness. The two bodies on the deck still did not move.
“Into the boats,” someone ordered, his voice steady with authority. “There’s no time to argue, just do it!”
There was sudden, swift obedience, fumbling now to see without the light. At least two of them seemed to be hurt, and there was another lying behind the engine housing forward. There were nine men alive. They divided four into one boat, five into the other. It was awkward, slippery, knuckle- and shin-bruising work climbing and then dropping into the shifting, swinging boats, unshipping the oars and pulling away from the steamer.
Joseph had one oar, someone he could not distinguish had the other. The man with the injured arm was in the stern, his good hand on the tiller, and someone apparently more seriously hurt lay on the boards at the bottom. Joseph pulled as hard as he could, trying to fit in with the rhythm of the other man, but it was difficult. The boat bucked and twisted in the choppy sea.
He started to count aloud. “Pull!” Wait. “Pull!” The other man obeyed, and suddenly the oars bit and they began to create a distance between them and the steamer. He had no time even to think where the other boat might be.
Then it happened. The cannon on the U-boat fired and the steamer erupted in a gout of fire. The noise was deafening and the shock of the blast seared across the water. An instant later there was a second shock, far greater as the boat exploded, yellow and white flames leapt up into the sky. Metal, wood, and burning debris flew high in the air, lighting up the waves, the stark outline of the steamer, broken-backed, already beginning to settle deeper. The other boat was fifty yards away off the bow. Mason was pulling at the oar beside Joseph. The U-boat beyond was temporarily hidden.
In the glare Mason smiled. “Can’t seem to lose you, can I?” he said wryly. “I suppose I should be grateful, at least you saved us all going down with the ship. You’re more use than most priests. Keep pulling!”
Joseph put his back to the oar again. The ship was still burning fiercely, but already the sea was rushing in and it would plunge within minutes, creating a vortex that would suck in everything close to it.
“If you’re waiting for me to say something nice about war correspondents, keep hoping. I’ll try . . . when I have time,” he answered.
Mason gave a bark of laughter and threw his weight against the oars again.
They rowed in silence, skirting wide around the sinking ship, which exploded twice more, sending steam hissing high in a white jet, then erupting in red flames just before it tipped and slid with a roar into the black water, and within moments was gone, nothing but a few pieces of wreckage remaining. The U-boat had vanished. The other lifeboat was just visible, about half a mile away.
The two other men in the boat had not moved appreciably, neither had they spoken. Now the one with the injured arm bent over awkwardly and spoke to the man who was half propped up against the side, his head resting against one of the ribs of the hull.
“How are you doing, Johnny?” he asked, his voice strained, gasping with his own pain.
There was no answer.
“Somebody help me!” he begged. “I think he’s out cold! We’ve got first-aid stuff in the locker, and there should be a lantern, and food and water, and a compass.”
Joseph handed the oar to Mason, who moved to the center of the seat and took over. The boat slowed a little, but it was possible for one man to manage, as long as the weather got no worse.
Joseph opened the locker, feeling in the dark, fumbling a little until he located the lantern and, shielding it from the wind with his body, got it alight. Then he could see that indeed there was a first-aid box, several bottles of water, hard rations of biscuits, dried beef, and bitter chocolate, and even a couple of packets of Woodbines. The matches he already had, from lighting the lamp.
The first thing was to see how badly the crewmen were injured. He looked first at the man lying on the boards. He had been shot twice, once in the upper thigh and once in the shoulder. Both wounds had bled badly and he was barely conscious.
“Can you do anything for him?” the other crewman asked anxiously.
“I’ll try,” Joseph replied. He had very little real medical knowledge, but this was not the time to say so. He certainly would not even think of attempting to take a bullet out by lamplight on the floor of a pitching boat, but he could roll up cloth into pads and do everything possible to stop the bleeding. It might be enough.
“Hold up the lantern,” he asked. “What’s your name?”
“Andy.” In the yellow light he looked no more than nineteen or twenty, fair-haired, a blunt freckled face, now pasty white.
Joseph worked as well as he could, but it was difficult and the clothes around the wounds were soaked in blood. Even when he pressed on them, the injured man barely groaned. He was sinking deeper and there was nothing they could do about it. When he had bound him up, Joseph tried to get him to take a little water, even just to moisten his mouth, but he was too far gone to swallow.
After that he did what he could for Andy. His upper arm had been shot through and it was bleeding badly as well, but the bone was intact. When he bound it as tightly as he dared without cutting off the circulation, it seemed to stanch the bleeding, even if it was no help for the pain.
He returned to take the other oar from Mason. The wind was stronger and they were having to work much harder to keep the boat moving, and headed against the waves so it did not turn sideways to them and risk being swamped.
There was a faint paling in the northeast of the sky, as if dawn were not far off. The other boat was nowhere to be seen.
“I suppose you’ve still got your story about Gallipoli?” Joseph asked.
“Of course,” Mason replied.
“And you’re still determined to hand it in?”
“You’ve already argued that one, Reverend.” He used the word with mild sarcasm. “You preach your gospel, I’ll preach mine. You want to protect people from the truth, for what you think is the greater good. I think they have the right to know what they’re signing up for, what the battle will cost them, and what chance they have of winning anything worth a damn.” He dug into the water and pulled, hurling his weight against the oar.
“You’re going to tell them the truth about Gallipoli, how many men are dying, and how?” Joseph pressed.
“Yes!”
“And what you think our chances are of winning and making it through to Constantinople?”
“No chance at all. Nor of getting the Russian fleet out of the Black Sea. And even if we did it would make no damn difference in the end. We’d probably give Constantinople to the Russians anyway,” Mason said.
“And that our generals out there are ill informed and for the most part incompetent?”
“For the most part, yes. You want to protect them? That’s naive, Reverend, and dangerous. Your pity for them, God knows why, is getting in the way of your intelligence. Maybe your religion requires you to be compassionate and see the good in everyone, but He gave you a brain as well, presumably in the hope you’d use it! Do you really think any man’s reputation is worth what those soldiers are paying for it?”
“I’m not trying to protect reputations!” Joseph dug just as deeply with his oar. It was taking all his strength and the exhausted muscles in his back and arms to hold the boat to the wind. Mason must feel the same. He had carried just as many wounded men. “I’m trying to keep up hope and courage at home, for very good reasons, and a
