The biggest problem was the sea. The past half hour had been a relentless repetition of the same sickening cycle. The boat would climb one roller, teeter for an instant on the top, then plunge down into the next trough. At the bottom it always seemed as if the vessel were about to be swallowed by a gray-green canyon of seawater. The decks were constantly awash. Neumann could no longer feel his feet. He looked down for the first time and noticed he was standing in several inches of icy water.
Still, miraculously, he thought they might actually make it. The boat seemed to be absorbing all the punishment the sea could dish out. It was five thirty a.m.--they still had thirty minutes left before the window closed and the U-boat turned away. He had been able to keep the boat on a constant heading and felt confident they were approaching the right spot. And there was no sign of the opposition.
There was just one problem: they had no radio. They had lost Catherine's in London, and they had lost the second to Martin Colville's shotgun blast in Hampton Sands. Neumann had hoped the boat would have a radio, but it didn't. Which left them no means of signaling the U-boat.
Neumann had only one option: to switch on the boat's running lights.
It was a gamble but a necessary one. The only way the U-boat would know they were at the rendezvous position was if it could see them. And the only way the Camilla could be spotted in conditions like these was to be illuminated. But if the U-boat could see them, so could any British warships or coastguard vessels in the vicinity.
Neumann reckoned he was a couple of miles from the rendezvous point. He pressed on for five more minutes, then reached down and threw a switch, and the Camilla came alive with light.
Jenny Colville leaned over the bucket and threw up in it for the third time. She wondered how there was anything left to come out of her stomach. She tried to remember the last time she'd had food. She had not eaten dinner last night because she was angry with her father, and she had not eaten any lunch either. Breakfast, maybe, and that was nothing more than a biscuit and tea.
Her stomach convulsed again, but this time nothing came out. She had lived next to the sea her entire life but she had been on a boat just once--a day sail around the Wash with the father of a friend from school--and never had she experienced anything like this.
She was absolutely paralyzed with seasickness. She wanted to die. She was desperate for fresh air. She was helpless against the constant pitching and rocking of the vessel. Her arms and legs were bruised from the battering. And then there was the noise--the constant deafening rumble and clatter of the boat's engine.
It felt as if it were just beneath her.
She wanted nothing more in the world than to get off the boat and be back on land. She told herself over and over again that if she survived this night she would never get on a boat again, ever. And then she thought, What happens when they get where they're going? What are they going to do with me? Surely they weren't going to take this boat all the way to Germany. They would probably meet another boat. Then what happens? Would they take her with them again or leave her on the boat alone? If they left her alone she might never be found. She could die out on the North Sea alone in a storm like this.
The boat skidded down the slope of another enormous wave. Jenny was thrown forward in the cabin, striking her head.
There were two portholes on either side of the cabin. With her bound hands, she rubbed away the condensation in the starboard porthole and looked out. The sea was terrifying, rolling green mountains of seawater.
There was something else. The sea boiled and something dark and shiny punctured the surface from below. Then the sea was in turmoil and a giant gray thing like a sea monster in a child's tale floated to the surface, seawater slipping from its skin.
Kapitanleutnant Max Hoffman, tired of holding at the ten-mile mark, had decided to take a chance and creep a mile or two closer to shore. He had waited at the eight-mile mark, peering into the gloom, when he suddenly spotted the running lights of a small fishing vessel. Hoffman shouted an order to surface and two minutes later he was standing on the bridge in the driving rain, breathing the cold clean air, Zeiss glasses pressed to his eyes.
Neumann thought it might be a hallucination at first. The glimpse had been brief--just an instant before the boat plunged downward into yet another trough of seawater and everything was obliterated once again.
The prow dug deeply into the sea, like a shovel into dirt, and for a few seconds the entire foredeck was swamped. But somehow the boat climbed out of the trough and scaled the next peak. At the top of the next roller, a squall of windblown rain obscured all view.
The boat fell, then rose again. Then, as the Camilla teetered atop a mountain of seawater, Hurst Neumann spotted the unmistakable silhouette of a German U-boat.
It was Peter Jordan, on the pitching aft deck of the Rebecca, who spotted the U-boat first. Lockwood saw it a few seconds later and then spotted the running lights of the Camilla, about four hundred yards off the U-boat's starboard side and closing quickly. Lockwood brought the Rebecca hard to port, set it on a collision course with the Camilla, and picked up the handset to raise Alfred Vicary.