police. . . .”
“All right!” Mason yelled. “There won’t be a bloody thing if you don’t help me keep this boat ahead of the wind! We’ll all be dead!”
“No, we won’t,” Joseph told him, leaning forward to make himself heard above the roar and crash of the sea. “You and I will be, and unfortunately Andy, but no one else. The other crewman is dead anyway.”
Andy struggled to sit up. His face was ashen white in the cold morning light. The hard gray sea was racing around them, waves spume-topped, foam flying.
“Do you agree with him?” Mason demanded, staring at Andy. “Is this what you want, really? Because if it isn’t, you’d better tell him.” He jerked his hand toward Joseph. “And quickly. I can’t hold this much longer.”
“It’s what I want,” Andy answered, his eyes screwed up against the wind, but unwavering. “You’ve got to fight for what you believe, an’ die for it, if that’s the way it goes. An’ you fight for your mate, same as he’d fight for you.”
“And is Belgium your mate?” Mason asked savagely.
Andy gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah. S’pose he is. Your mate’s whoever’s beside you. The Germans’ve got no right to go through Belgium doing what they’re doing. Nor into France neither. We’d fight if it was England. It isn’t different, just ’cos it’s somebody else.” He said it simply, as if it were obvious.
Joseph felt a sting in his throat. It was the whole philosophy of the British “Tommy” he knew. Are you your brother’s keeper? Yes, you are, at the price of your life, if that’s what it takes. All his and Mason’s arguments were academic, deciding for others. It was Andy, and a million men like him, whose lives were the cost.
He looked at Mason’s face and saw the amazement in him, and the grasp after a new understanding.
“You throw that thing overboard and swear as you won’t write it again, or we’ll all go down,” Andy told him. “I reckoned I’d give up my life for my country, if I had to—well, this is having to, that’s all. Never thought it’d be to stop a traitor, but at least there’s some point in that.”
“For God’s sake, man, I just want to stop the bloody slaughter!” Mason shouted back at him. “Do you know how many men are dead already, and the war isn’t a year old yet?”
Joseph ached to be able to help him, but he could think of nothing else to say. Any hour, any minute now, Mason would be unable to hold the boat alone and it would go over, and they would all be in the sea, floundering, battered, struggling as long as they could until it overwhelmed them, and they swallowed water, it filled their lungs, bursting. Could it be as bad as being gassed? He remembered that with a sickening horror! And what about Prentice, drowned not in the clear sea but in the filth of a shell crater. Sam had done that, Sam, whom Joseph loved as much as a brother. He reached out his hand and grasped Andy’s and felt his fingers respond, stiffly, too cold for more.
“I don’t care!” Andy gasped. “I stand fast!”
Mason struggled with the oars. He was weakening. His face was tight with the strain, but it was in his mind as much as his aching body. He looked at Andy for another moment, then at Joseph. “It’s in my pocket inside my jacket,” he shouted. “Take the oars from me, and I’ll throw it overboard. You could be right, England might be full of suicidal idiots like you.”
Joseph grinned hugely, even though he did not know how much the victory was really worth. They could well drown anyway. It was a triumph of the spirit at least. He fell forward onto his knees as the boat tossed and jolted again, swinging round and slamming against the waves. He took the oars from Mason and threw his weight and all his strength into pulling the boat straight, safe from the trough. It tore at the muscles on his back and shoulders, but he was rested, stronger than Mason now, and he could hold it, at least until Mason had thrown the papers away.
“Tear them up,” he added aloud.
Mason made one more attempt. “It won’t make any bloody difference! I’m not the only one.”
“The only one what?” Joseph asked.
“Writing the truth, and who’ll get published.”
“You’re the one writing about Gallipoli,” Joseph responded. “You’re the one who’ll do the damage.”
Mason gave a bark of laughter. “Don’t you believe it! We’ve got a new young chap at Ypres. He was actually there for the first gas attack. He’s got an almost photographic memory, but he took notes of it all, the panic, the horror, the way the men died.”
Joseph froze. “Notes?”
“You’ll never find them, they’re all in a code he developed when he was at school.”
Suddenly the hard, white light and the waves were as clear as midsummer, burning from horizon to horizon. “Eldon Prentice,” he said aloud.
Now it was Mason who crouched as if turned to stone. It would have been impossible to deny it—his face betrayed him.
“He’s dead,” Joseph told him. “Dead in no-man’s-land, drowned in a shell crater full of filth. Don’t even think to argue. I carried him in myself. Or to be more accurate, I dragged him most of the way. He’s buried near Wulvergem. I don’t know what happened to his notes, but I can guess.”
Mason blinked, still without responding.
“I have a friend who was at school with him. He could read them. You’re on your own. Put your papers over the side.”
Slowly, Mason took the carefully wrapped package out of its safety pouch and let the waves take it, then, as if infinitely tired, he lay back in the stern and Andy passed him the bottle of water.
Mason moved back to the other oar and silently they pulled together. Joseph took count of time. The wind chopped and by midday the sun was high, but there was no sight of land.
Joseph sat back. He was exhausted. Every inch of his body hurt and he was so hungry he would have welcomed even the worst of trench rations, but there was very little left in the emergency store, and they must make it last as long as possible. It was the lack of water that worried him most. They were restricting themselves to a mouthful each, every hour or so. Even then, there was perhaps another twelve hours left.
Mason looked haggard, and Andy was so white his skin seemed almost gray, but the bleeding had stopped some time ago.
“There’s no point in rowing,” Joseph said quietly. “We might as well ship oars and take a rest.”
Mason did not argue. Together they completed the stroke and lifted the oars in. They laid there along the bottom of the boat, careful not to knock the dead man.
“You should rest, too,” Joseph said to Andy. There was nothing on the horizon in any direction, no land to row toward, no ship whose attention to attract, not that that would be easy, lying so low in the water themselves.
Andy nodded, and carefully, to avoid bumping his arm, he slid down into the floorboards more comfortably. He smiled at Joseph, then closed his eyes. Nestled a little sideways, as if asleep, it was easy to see in him the child he had been a few short years ago.
Joseph glanced at Mason, and saw the recognition of exactly that in his face. His eyes burned with the blame, and the challenge.
Joseph did not speak, but he was as sure of his answer as Mason of his question.
He made himself as comfortable as he could and must have slept for quite some time, because when he woke Mason was sitting up, and the sun was low and murky over the water to the west.
“There’s a fog coming,” Mason said grimly. “Do you want some water?” He held out the canteen.
Joseph’s mouth was dry and his head was pounding. He took the canteen, and could feel by the weight of it that if Mason had drank any at all, it was not more than his rationed mouthful. He smiled, drank his own gulp, and passed it back. “No point in waking him,” he said, nodding toward Andy. He checked that he was breathing, and then sat back again. “We should row,” he said to Mason.
“Where to?” Mason glanced around. “America?”
“Northwest,” Joseph answered. “The storm blew us south. However far we’ve come, there should be the south coast of England to the north of us, and even if we were beyond that, which we aren’t, there’d be Ireland. We’d better row while there’s still light.”
“What the hell do we need light for?” Mason said bitterly. “We’re not exactly going to hit anything!”
“Fog,” Joseph replied. “We’ll only know which direction we’re going as long as we can see the sun in the
