Wreckers Must Breathe (5 page)

Big Logan steered off the subject of the owner of Carillon without any explanation as to why he had been interested in the man. We had a drink on the house and, after discussing the war for a while, we left the pub.

Outside, Big Logan said, ‘We'd best go up and have a talk with Ted Morgan.' Morgan was one of the coastguards and it was plain that my companion was not feeling too sure of himself. He had not told the landlord about his suspicions, and had thus prevented the story from circulating throughout the village. Clearly he now wanted confirmation of the conclusion he had arrived at. The coastguard was the sort of father of all wisdom in the village.

But when I was introduced to him in the Board of Trade hut on the cliffs, I doubted whether he was as shrewd as Big Logan. In their relations with the Government, however, the fishermen of the village always turned to Morgan, since he understood the regulations and knew all about the forms they had to fill in. The habit had stuck.

Big Logan told him the whole story. With his feet thrust slightly apart and his thumbs in his leather waistbelt, he seemed to fill the whole hut, his beard wagging up and down as he spoke. By comparison, the little Welshman, seated at the desk before the telescope, seemed very small indeed. When Logan had finished I sensed that Morgan was sceptical. He put his head on one side like a bird and drummed with his fingers on the desk. ‘It is possible, of course,' he conceded, and he darted a glance at the big fisherman. ‘It is possible. I saw what I think was a U-boat about six miles off the coast only yesterday.' He leaned forward in his chair. ‘But where would he have landed?'

‘What about the Devil's Frying Pan?' suggested Logan.

‘Yes, indeed—but it was very choppy last night. The boat would have been stove in.'

‘They have collapsible boats,' replied Logan. ‘They're made of rubber.'

‘Well, supposing it was possible to land a man safely from a submarine at the Frying Pan, why should the Germans want to? Surely they would have all their spies in the country by now?'

It was a very reasonable point. Logan shrugged his great shoulders. ‘I'm not responsible for their actions,' he said. ‘Maybe this man Cutner is a spy and one of the officers of the U-boat was sent ashore to collect important information from him.'

The coastguard considered this for a moment whilst he explored his small discoloured teeth wih a toothpick. At length he shook his head and said, ‘You know, there are sharks on this coast.'

‘Good God Almighty!' exclaimed Big Logan with sudden exasperation. ‘Do you think I don't know a bloody shark when I see one? This wasn't a shark. The displacement of water was too great. It was either a submarine or a whale. And if you think you've ever seen a whale from this little perch of yours, you'd better put in for your discharge right now.'

This outburst apparently left the little coastguard unmoved. He continued to drum with his fingers on his desk and to pick his teeth with the toothpick. In the end he turned to me and said, ‘What do you think about it, Mr Craig?'

His question put me in an awkward situation. I was not at all convinced that Logan was right. It seemed much too fantastic. On the other hand, I did not want to offend him. I said, ‘I think the matter ought to be investigated.'

The coastguard then turned to Logan. ‘What would you like me to do about it? Get on to the police?'

‘What the hell's the good of the police?' demanded Logan. ‘Either get on to the Admiralty, or phone Scotland Yard and tell them to pass the information on to M.I.5.' It was only then that I realized that he must be old enough to have been through the last war. Generally the inhabitants of English country districts call it the secret service. ‘If you don't feel like doing either of these,' he continued, ‘I suggest we settle the matter locally.'

‘How?'

‘Well, figure it out this way,' he said. ‘You're probably right when you say a spy wouldn't be landed by submarine—certainly not on this part of the coast. If he is a German, then he'll have been landed to collect information. And if he's been landed to collect information, he's still got to get it back to the submarine. Our job is to see that he doesn't.'

‘He may have rejoined his boat already,' I said.

‘What—last night?' Big Logan shook his head. ‘The sea was rising fast. By the time he'd reached the cottage and got back to the shore again it would have been absolutely impossible to get a boat in anywhere along the cliffs there. It would have been pretty bad landing at Cadgwith even. What I suggest is, we lie in wait for him on the cliffs above the Frying Pan tonight. If he doesn't come—well then, we can consider what's best to be done.'

The coastguard considered this. Then he said, ‘All right, Big Logan. You and Mr Craig here wait for him on the cliffs. I'll take two of the boys and keep watch by the head there.' He nodded through the window to the opposite headland that guarded the entrance to Cadgwith from the south west. ‘I suppose we can take your boat?'

Big Logan nodded. ‘Surely. And take that old service revolver of yours, Ted—you may need it.'

The coastguard pulled open a drawer and, routing among a pile of government forms and other papers, produced a revolver. He turned it over reflectively in his hand as though it brought back old memories. Then he shook his head. ‘It's early for spy scares. Still, it won't do any harm to take it along.'

So it was that at nine-thirty that evening Big Logan and I met on the path above the Devil's Frying Pan. By that time I had heard the news of the sinking of the
Athenia
and was suffering from that indefinable desire to express my horror in action. This, I think, is the most deadly moral effect of war. As I had walked along the path from Church Cove my mind had evolved all sorts of wild schemes by which I could bring about the destruction of the submarine. It wasn't until I had settled down to the long vigil on the cliff-top that I gave a thought for the men in the boat itself. Then all the horror of the
Thetis
disaster flooded back into my mind. Journalism and the theatre foster the growth of an imagination. And in war an imagination is a definite handicap. I could not help—despite the sinking of the
Athenia
—a sudden feeling of deep sympathy for men of the German submarine service scattered about the high seas, cooped up in their steel shells, facing a horrible and almost inevitable death.

But after all, there was no question of destroying the submarine. Somehow I felt thankful that Big Logan had not felt sure enough of himself to insist upon the Admiralty being notified. I could picture the torpedo boat waiting under the shelter of the headland and then dashing out, as the U-boat submerged, to drop depth charges that would blow her back to the surface and destroy her utterly. But there was only Big Logan's boat waiting, with no bigger armaments than the coastguard's revolver, and the two of us sitting on top of the cliffs. Anyway, there probably was no U-boat.

That belief grew as the hours slipped monotonously by. We could neither smoke nor talk. We sat on a great rock on the westward side of the Frying Pan, watching the sea until everything merged into the blackness of a tunnel. There were no stars, no moon—the night was like a pit. I had brought some chocolate. We ate that, spinning it out as long as possible, for it gave us something to do. At length I began to feel drowsy. It was then nearly two. I was cold and stiff. For a time I felt angry with Big Logan for assuming that I would accompany him on this damfool errand. The belief that he did not know a shark when he saw one had grown to a certainty by the time I fell asleep.

It seemed but a second later that I was being shaken out of my sleep. I opened my mouth to speak, but a rough hand closed over it and Big Logan's voice whispered in my ear, ‘Keep quiet and watch the sea.'

I felt suddenly tense. The night was as black as ever and, as I stared out into it, I felt that I might just as well be blind. Then suddenly a light showed out there on the water. I saw its reflection for an instant in the sea. Then it was gone, and the night was as dark as ever, so that I felt it must have been my imagination.

Big Logan did not move. I sensed the rigidity of his body. His head, only a few feet away from my own, was just visible. It was tilted slightly to one side as he listened, his eyes fixed on the spot where I supposed the water must flow into the Frying Pan.

At length he rose. And I scrambled to my feet too, though I had heard nothing. He took my arm and together we moved with great care back on to the path. There we waited, huddled against the wall of the big white house that lay back from the Frying Pan. ‘The boat has arrived,' he whispered in my ear. ‘It's down in the Frying Pan now. And I saw the flash of your friend's torch away along the cliff as he signalled the submarine.'

It seemed hours before we heard the sound of footsteps on the path. Actually I suppose it was only a few minutes. They drew nearer. I felt Logan tense for the spring. Then they ceased. Almost at the same time there was the flash of a torch reddened by a screening hand. And in that flash the slim waterproof-clad figure stood out quite clearly. He had left the path and had reached almost the exact spot where we had been sitting. He was descending the steep shoulder of the Frying Pan towards the archway.

For all his bulk, Logan moved swiftly. He was down the slope, a vague blur in the darkness, almost before I had crossed the path. As I scrambled down the shoulder I saw him pounce. It was so dark that it was difficult to distinguish what happened, but I think the man turned just before the attack. My one fear had been that he would have a revolver. But if he had, he got no chance to use it. Logan had the advantage of the slope and his own huge bulk. They went down together, and when I reached them Logan had his man pinioned to the ground, his hand across his mouth. ‘Search him,' he said.

I ran my hands over his body and felt the outline of an automatic in the pocket of his waterproof. I was on the point of removing it when the whole scene was suddenly illuminated by a torch. I looked up and was almost blinded by its light. I have a vivid mental picture of Big Logan's bearded head in silhouette against that dazzling light. The light came steadily nearer. A tall man in uniform was standing over us. His arms rose and fell, and as it fell in front of the torch I saw that his hand grasped a big service revolver by the barrel. There was a sickening thud, and Big Logan slumped forward. The man in the waterproof thrust Logan's body away from him and scrambled to his feet. Something cold and hard was pressed against my head. I knew what it was and I thought my last hour had come. The man had not switched off his torch and I could see Big Logan's head hanging loosely over a rock and blood was trickling down from his scalp into his beard. I thought the blow had killed him.

‘Wir werden sie beide mitnehmen.' It was the man in the waterproof speaking. I was never so thankful for a knowledge of German. Their decision to take us along was presumably due to a desire to leave no evidence of the fact that they had landed and to safeguard, as far as possible, the owner of Carillon.

The man in the waterproof turned to me. ‘You must regard yourself as our prisoner,' he said in his precise English. ‘You will walk two paces in front. Any attempt to escape or to attract attention and you will be shot.' He motioned me forward with his automatic, and then he and the other German each took hold of one of Logan's arms. The torch was switched off and in the sudden darkness I could hardly see where I was going. I could hear Logan's feet dragging along the ground behind me as I went down the slope to the bottom of the Frying Pan. The Germans frequently had to pause in order to adjust Logan's weight between them and the sound of their breathing became louder.

It grew darker than ever as we descended and I almost stumbled into the arms of a man waiting at the water's edge. He challenged us in German. ‘Schon gut, Karl,' answered the man in the waterproof. ‘Sehen Sie, dass die Leute in's Boot kommen.'

‘Zu Befehl, Herr Kapitaenlautnent.'

So Logan had been right. It was the commander of the U-boat that had been landed. I began to wonder what it was that he had come ashore for. It must have been something of considerable importance for him to run that risk at the outbreak of war. We ought to have realized that one of the boat's crew might come up to meet him. Our only hope now lay in the coastguard, waiting off the headland—or had they already dealt with him? Was that what had put them on their guard?

The boat was dragged in closer. It was a collapsible affair with two oars, and by the time Logan's inert body had been placed in it, there seemed no prospect of it holding four more men. However, it did, though it sat very low in the water as a result. The commander sat facing me with his automatic ready, while the other two men took an oar each.

Silently we slid beneath the great archway that had originally formed the entrance to the cave before it had collapsed to make the Frying Pan. It was lighter as soon as we got out into the open sea and it was possible to distinguish the dim outline of the cliffs towering above us. Soon, however, even this landmark merged and was lost in the night. It seemed impossible to believe that we should find the submarine in the dark until, turning my head, I saw the merest pinprick of a light showing straight over our bows.

I looked back at the commander. He was watching me, the automatic gripped in his hand, its barrel pointed at me. Big Logan lay inert between us. There was no sign of the coastguard's boat. Then I began to think of the information that the U-boat commander had presumably obtained. What was it—movements of merchant ships, fleet dispositions, transport sailings? It might mean the loss of hundreds of lives if he were allowed to reach the submarine with it. I shifted my position. The boat rocked dangerously. ‘Still!' Though the commander spoke English, his voice was not English. There was something cold about it, and I sat rigid, the automatic thrust a few inches nearer.