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SPECIAL ROUTE FOR SMALL CRAFT. THAMES TO DUNKIRK.
You are to proceed at your utmost speed direct to the beaches eastward of Dunkirk.
From the NORE proceed by Cant, Four Fathoms, Horse Gore and South Channels, or by any other route with which you are familiar, to close round North Foreland and thence to North Goodwin Light Vessel.
From NORTH GOODWIN LIGHT VESSEL proceed direct to DUNKIRK ROADS and close the beaches to the eastward. Approximate course and distance from North Goodwin L.V. S 53 E 37 miles.
NOTE: The tideset about N.E. and S.W. during the time of ebb and flood at Dover respectively. H.W. Dover 29th May is 6.30. a.m. and 6 p.m. B.S.T. On the 30th, about 6.45 a.m. and 7 p.m. Maximum strength of tide about 1 to 1 1/2 knots.
***
By the light of a swinging paraffin light, the two young women leaned together to study the orders and the chart. After unravelling the mysteries of the tides, they fell silent for a moment. The dawn was just beginning to break across Sheerness harbour.
"I've sailed across the Channel before," said Susan thoughtfully, her finger tracing the light blue of the map.
"Golly," Nancy replied. "Of course you have."
"We were so young. John was barely fifteen; I wasn't even that. And at night, too."
She shuddered. At the time it had been terrifying; afterwards it had seemed a splendid adventure; and the whole things seemed different once again when considered at the mature age of twenty-three.
"I was terribly jealous, you know," offered Nancy. "When you and John and Titty and Roger told me the story. So that I could hardly speak. I would have given anything to have been washed out to sea in a fog."
"When we were in the middle of the Channel, I would have given anything to have changed places with you."
Nancy's face suddenly became almost sombre.
"And now..."
She allowed her words to trail off, so that Susan found herself holding her breath. Surely it could not be that Captain Nancy, the Terror of the Seas, was uncertain?
"And now it's an even greater adventure," finished Nancy firmly, making it so by sheer force of will.
"You'll have to show me how it's done," she continued with that unshakable certitude that Susan had always so admired. "I've never been further than the Isle of Wight."
And never with the dim sounds of cannon drifting on the salt air with the cries of the seagulls. Tremendously near and distant at once, France floated at just the other edge of the horizon. The year was 1940.
***
It all began with a call to Nancy's uncle from a friend, indignant, evacuated to Leamington Spa with an ailing wife. And his yacht still in harbour at Hastings.
"They're requisitioning ships," he had said. "The Ministry of Shipping. They're taking Amalthea to Dunkirk without so much as a by-your-leave."
He could not leave to go with his ship. But Nancy could. And would, or so she had insisted.
"You'll need a first mate," said Nancy's uncle, who recognized a done thing when he saw it. "But with my dodgy hip I'd not be much use to you."
It was not so easy to find a first mate in wartime. Peggy was doing war work in Lancaster. A round of frantic telephone calls produced no one who could drop everything to cross the Channel at only a day's notice. And then Nancy found herself thinking of those childhood friends with whom she'd once shared so many adventures.
Titty? No. Dorothea? No.
It had been Susan Walker who finally answered the call, taking the train from a teacher training college in Bedfordshire to meet Nancy on the Sheerness docks in the early hours of the morning.
It was just like old times, and yet nothing like old times at all.
***
They were afloat in the Channel when the rising of the sun revealed the flotilla of ships around them. Fishing vessels, tugs, lifeboats, pleasure steamers, launches, all bobbing together on the waves in ramshackle assortment, as if the whole of the South coast had set out together on a grand outing. The wind was picking up, and Susan's hair blew loose from its plait.
"We should be under sail," said Nancy as the engine chugged steadily away.
"There's nothing for it," said Susan.
"If only Roger were here, perhaps he'd be pleased."
They looked up at the bare mast, and its pennant flying bravely, with a pang for what might have been. Were it not wartime.
A naval destroyer loomed to port, rocking Amalthea in its wake. There was no way of missing Dunkirk with escorts like this showing the way. Leaning over the railing, a sailor waved and then disappeared once more. Nancy thought of John and Roger, at sea in the North Atlantic, and said nothing.
On this voyage there would be none of Susan's usual cooking. No eggs and bacon for breakfast, and not even a bar of chocolate to nibble. Nancy stilled her grumbles about rationing, realizing that Susan had done her best with the provisions.
"It isn't much," she said apologetically.
"It's better than the soldiers will be getting," said Nancy. "Why should we have more? Ship's biscuits for me."
They ate bread and cheese and drank tea without sugar, and gazed out to sea for their first sight of land. It seemed that it would never come. Out in the middle of the Atlantic, one waited for birds as the sign of land nearby. Here in the Channel in wartime it was the German bombers, circling overhead to deliver their cargo and then slipping away again.
And then another call went up, passed from boat to boat on the wind.
"Mines! Mines!"
Far away, a paddle steamer was sinking. It was so familiar, a boat that might have carried the Swallows or the Amazons on a holiday to the Isle of Wight or on an excursion up and down the Thames. They were too far to do any good, so they could only sit and watch. Nancy swallowed, a lump in her throat.
"If not duffers, won't drown," said Susan quietly, quoting the contents of a long-ago telegram to Holly How. "It's not true, is it, Nancy?"
"Maybe on Coniston Water," said Nancy. "Not here."
And they clasped hands for a moment and silently prayed for all those in danger on the seas, whether duffers or not.
***
The Dunkirk beaches were wide and welcoming at low tide. Only a few years earlier they would have been filled with holiday-makers on a fine May day, with yachts like Amalthea bobbing off-shore on their pleasure cruises.
Now sheets of oily black smoke blew overhead, blotting out the sun. It was just as well. The smoke also shielded the flotilla from the German bombers that flew to and fro, searching for targets in the sea.
"Sunken ships," exclaimed Susan. "Look, Nancy. One there--and another. They're all around us."
They were not old wrecks either, not remnants of glorious naval battles of the past. This place was a graveyard and no mistake.
"You'll have to keep a look out," said Nancy, at the tiller. "I won't see them until we're upon them. You must guide us in."
Amalthea nosed forward, sliding in towards the beach past the cordon of destroyers. The rattle and crack of a machine gun sounded very near. A diving German plane. There was a line of splashes where the bullets hit the water.
"Don't jump," said Nancy to herself softly. "Steady on, eyes ahead. Don't jump."
She held the tiller fast, abiding by her own direction though she reminded herself once or twice more just to make sure. She followed Susan's commands, turning hard to port or starboard to avoid the wrecks in the shallow water.
"Maybe we should sing," suggested Susan, her voice shaky. "To keep up our spirits."
A verse or two of "Spanish Ladies" seemed small consolation in such a place, for there had been no mines and no dive bombers for the British sailors of yesteryear. And yet it did their hearts good for a time.
Soldiers covered the beaches by the thousands and tens of thousands, their brown uniforms making them look like ants on a tropical island. They waded into the sea in endless queues, trying to get out to the deeper water where the boats could reach them.
"Look at all of them," said Susan. "We'll never..."
"We must," said Nancy grimly.
It seemed an eternity before Amalthea was near enough that the men--grateful, desperate men, faces muddied and weary, standing up to their chests in water--could begin to clamber aboard.
"You must be angels," said one as Susan and Nancy helped him up the rope ladder. "We've been standing here for hours now. Beginning to think they'd just bugger off and leave us here."
He blushed for a moment at his language.
"Begging your pardon, miss," he added.
"We're not angels," said Nancy, biting her lip to avoid laughing at the incongruity of the apology.
"But we will get you home," said Susan.
And she reached out a hand to the next soldier.
***
Men everywhere. The waft of cigarette smoke, the chop of waves, and blood on the deck. One of the soldiers was badly wounded, a private even younger than they were. He groaned as his comrades lifted him on deck and carried him down into the cabin.
It was what was left of a platoon, three dozen men or more. Their Lieutenant had insisted that none of his men could be left behind, and Nancy had agreed, though Amalthea rode very low in the water by the time the last of them had climbed aboard.
And there were two Belgian soldiers, who seemed to belong everywhere and nowhere, and looked to the receding coast with worried, regretful gazes. Nancy spoke to them in broken French, reflecting that she had learnt at least something worthwhile in all those years of boarding school.
The destroyers shepherded the little ships back out to sea, their own decks packed with soldiers like anchovies in a tin. Nancy kept her hand steady on the tiller as Susan climbed down to the small cabin and then up again, squeezing past the soldiers who were packed tight wherever they could find room.
"He's still bleeding," she said, a note of panic in her voice. "We haven't enough bandages. Where is your pocket knife?"
She took the knife and began to cut her own jacket into strips.
"It's softer than the uniforms."
"Of course," said Nancy.
After a time one of the Belgians offered to take the tiller, and Nancy went below to relieve Susan.
"You must change his bandages when they need it," said Susan to Nancy, speaking in a low voice at the entrance to the cabin. "I've given him the medicinal rum already; he may have more if he asks. But--but really he needs someone to sit with him. Really that's all we can do."
There was more blood than Nancy wanted to see. The smell of it in the close cabin made her feel almost seasick. She bit her lip and reminded herself that Susan had been sitting down there for an hour altogether. Taking her seat by the wounded man, she tried to smile.
"My name is Nancy," she said.
"Jack."
He spoke haltingly, with pain, but he seemed to want to talk. Anything, she supposed, to keep his mind off of things.
"I come from the docks," he said. "Liverpool. Me dad was a sailor. Should have joined the Navy myself but I didn't want any part of it. I was a shop assistant in a furniture store when they--when they called me up."
"I'm from the Lakes," said Nancy, uncertain and helpless and hating every minute of it.
"Went there on holiday once," he replied, and winced as the bow of the ship cut through a wave. His face was deathly pale. The makeshift bandages were soaked through once more. "God. I just want to go home."
When Nancy was finally relieved of duty, she went up and was sick over the railing.
"Seasick?" asked the Lieutenant sympathetically.
"No," said Nancy, furiously blinking the tears out of her eyes.
***
By the time they neared Dover it was growing dark. The white cliffs were ghostly against a clearing sky. It would have been time to look to the chart, to navigate in by the lights, had it not been for the fact that they were obscured by a crowd of boats so thick that it seemed one could almost walk to shore.
Amalthea did not put into harbour so much as she was pushed there by the jostling of boat against boat, with not a few shouts and swears echoing across the water. If Nancy joined in then Susan pretended not to hear.
Ambulances and waiting buses lined the dockside as thickly as boats. Weary men clambered ashore, and those who could not were carried. Before Nancy and Susan had a chance to bid him farewell, the wounded private was put on a stretcher and taken quickly to an ambulance. All was confusion, but it was the glorious, marvelous English confusion of safety at last.
"Two girls," marveled the Lieutenant, lingering after his men had gone. "Come across the Channel by themselves, all that way, in a little yacht like that."
"She'd been before," said Nancy bashfully, jerking her chin at Susan. "At night, in the fog and a storm. She was only fourteen."
***