The five of them who had survived the ditching clung to two small rubber rafts. On a warm and glassy sea, they watched as the engine fire that had downed them extinguished itself with a prolonged hissing. A plume of steam rose in the moonlight, and the aircraft sank by the nose. After that it was quiet.
It was a long, chilly predawn, drifting on a flat silver sea beneath a flat silver sky, the weld between the two watertight and seamless. For hours nothing happened and there was nothing to be done. Then, as the sun rose huge and bloody, a breeze got up from the west. The wind blackened the wide red band that the rising sun made on the water.
There was not enough room for them all on the little yellow rafts so they took turns, two men at a time, to have fifteen minutes out of the water. Alistair was given half an hour, his missing arm making it more tiring to tread water.
He got his shoes off and let them sink. It occurred to him that this might be the farthest point offshore at which a British Army officer had ever lost a pair of the standard-issue brogues. They could add it to the crimes on his charge sheet.
By nine the sun began to contribute a little warmth, but the wind was increasing. For the men on the rafts the motion was sickening, and for the men in the water it was hard to hold on. For Alistair, with only one hand, it was a struggle. From time to time he choked on salt water when he couldn’t keep his mouth high enough. The others helped him where they could, but they were tiring too.
In his next turn on one of the rafts, a gust came and he toppled into the water. This time he went several feet under, and if he managed to kick back up it was only because the navigator swam down to help. On the surface he gasped, and only just managed to cling on.
He tried not to imagine the odds now. As his strength failed, little things began to amuse him. He thought of the great chain of consequence that had brought him to here, at the end, bobbing in a vast empty sea with four strangers. After everything, a simple engine fire had brought them down. It had happened with no enemy help. Perhaps there was a tiny victory, in wartime, in not being killed by the war. He laughed, and could not understand why the others looked at him so soberly.
At noon the wind died down and the wave tops sparkled. They all took their clothes off and let them sink. Alistair drifted in and out of sleep. He would come to, again and again, with his arm hooked through the encircling rope of the raft. Each time he wondered where he was. When the sun set, he didn’t notice. He woke up as usual, shivering violently, but this time it was dark. Lightning blazed above. Around him the men spoke in soft voices.
“When we get to Brighton Pier I think we should just tie up and have fish and chips, don’t you?”
“A pint of beer with mine.”
“Tom?” said Alistair. “Is that you?”
No one replied. The lightning gave them the coldest eyes, he thought.
Between the peals of thunder he heard voices shouting. He strained to hear. Men were calling his name, but he could not tell what they wanted. He called back but they didn’t hear. Their voices resolved into individual shouts that he recognized. He thought it might be his men, needing orders.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “Just hold on!”
They called louder, and he felt the terror in their voices. He shouted to the men to hold on to the rubber raft with him, if they could, and to pull themselves up out of the sea. He couldn’t see them but he heard their voices, and he comforted them and begged them to pull themselves aboard.
There was no moon and there were no stars. He yelled out that he was sorry, and after shouting for a long time he noticed that Duggan was clinging to the raft beside him. Alistair was glad, since Duggan would help him now. Duggan would help his men too, and Alistair closed his eyes tight and drifted into sleep.
In his sleep a deeper roar sounded beneath the surging of the waves. The roar increased in volume and broke into his dreams until he came awake with Duggan shaking his shoulder. “Come on, Huh . . . Heath, look luh . . . luh . . . lively!”
Alistair looked, through eyes blinded by salt. Searchlights were coming, over the sea. They came from the same place as the roaring. The lights turned the black sea silver. Spray gleamed, visible whenever the little rafts climbed to the top of a wave, then disappearing from sight in the troughs. The roaring sound grew enormous.