Read Chapter 17: The Missing Boat

The smoke hung over the beach like a shroud, thick enough to choke on. Arthur carried George's weight across his shoulders, each step sinking into wet sand that tried to pull him down. The boy's blood had soaked through Arthur's coat, warm and slick against his neck.

"Perseverance," Arthur muttered, scanning the shoreline through stinging eyes. "Where are you, girl?"

The beach had transformed in the hours he'd been gone. What had been a chaotic press of men and boats now looked like a slaughterhouse floor. Abandoned equipment littered the sand—rifles stacked like cordwood, blankets, helmets, a field gun tipped on its side. Bodies lay where they'd fallen, covered with whatever came to hand. The living moved with the hollow purpose of men who had stopped counting.

Fletcher appeared at Arthur's elbow, his face grey with exhaustion but his eyes still sharp. "The lorry's done for, sir. Petrol line's shot through."

Arthur grunted. He'd expected as much. They'd pushed the old Bedford hard, bouncing along cratered roads with George bleeding in the back and a dozen soldiers clinging to the sides. It had died a few hundred yards from the beach, coughing its last breath in a spray of steam.

"We need to find the boat," Arthur said. "She was moored at the east jetty when I left. Mac was to keep her there no matter what."

They stumbled forward, Arthur half-carrying George, Fletcher clearing a path through the debris. The soldiers who had ridden with them from the canal dispersed like startled birds, melting into the crowds of men waiting on the sand. Arthur didn't watch them go. His eyes were fixed on the jetty.

Or where the jetty should have been.

The wooden structure was gone. Not damaged—gone. A few shattered pilings jutted from the water like broken teeth, and the end of the pier had sheared off completely. A landing craft had rammed it sometime in the night, or a bomb had found it. Either way, the Perseverance was not there.

Arthur set George down carefully on a stretch of dry sand, propping him against a pile of abandoned kitbags. The boy's face was the colour of tallow, his breathing shallow and rattling.

"Keep an eye on him," Arthur told Fletcher. Then he ran.

He moved along the waterline, past clusters of soldiers wading out to smaller boats, past the burning wreck of a destroyer that sent oily black smoke rolling across the beach. He checked every mooring, every jetty, every craft that sat low in the water with a trawler's familiar lines. Men called out to him, officers shouting questions, soldiers asking for help, but he ignored them all.

She wasn't there.

Arthur stood at the water's edge, chest heaving, and stared out at the sea. The tide had turned. Wreckage floated past in a slow procession—timbers, crates, a soldier's helmet bobbing like a dark flower. Among the debris, boats moved, dozens of them, a ragged fleet making for England.

And there, far out, perhaps three miles from shore, Arthur saw her.

The Perseverance's profile was unmistakable—the high bow, the sturdy wheelhouse, the mast that had weathered a hundred storms. She was moving west, away from Dunkirk, her engines clearly still running.

"She's leaving," Arthur breathed.

But something was wrong. The boat's course wavered, turning one way and then another. And behind her, low and dark against the grey water, something else moved.

A German E-boat.

Even at this distance, Arthur could see it—the sleek, predatory shape of a fast attack craft, cutting through the water at speed. The Perseverance was running, but she couldn't outrun an E-boat. No trawler could.

Arthur's hands clenched into fists. His heart hammered against the sealed orders tucked inside his coat.

Then he saw the tracer fire.

A thin stream of orange light arced from the Perseverance's stern, stitching across the water toward the E-boat. Mac. It had to be Mac, manning the Lewis gun Arthur had mounted on the aft deck before the war—a relic from a fishing dispute that had never come to violence.

The E-boat swerved, its bow throwing up a white wave. It answered with its own fire—a heavier, faster stream of tracers that tore across the water. Arthur watched, helpless, as the Perseverance lurched and the tracers stopped.

"God damn it," Arthur snarled.

He turned and ran back to where Fletcher crouched with George. The boy's eyes were open now, glassy and unfocused, but alive. Fletcher had bound George's wound with strips torn from a dead man's coat, the makeshift bandage already soaked through.

"Mac's out there," Arthur said, pointing. "The Perseverance. She's being set upon by a Jerry E-boat."

Fletcher followed his gaze, squinting at the distant shapes. "She's too far out. We'll never reach her."

"I know." Arthur's voice was flat, hard. "But I'm going anyway."

He looked around the beach, desperation clawing at his chest. Men everywhere, but no boats. The evacuation had taken everything that floated, and what remained was wreckage.

Then he saw it.

Half-buried in the sand, overturned, its hull splintered along one side but otherwise intact—a small skiff. Fourteen feet, perhaps. Oars still lashed to the thwarts. A fisherman's boat, sturdy and simple.

Arthur ran to it. He grabbed the gunwale and heaved, feeling the strain in his back as the hull came free of the sand. Fletcher appeared beside him, lending his strength, and together they flipped the skiff upright.

"She's holed," Fletcher said, pointing to the splintered gash along the starboard side.

"I've got eyes." Arthur yanked off his coat, tearing the sleeve from his shirt. He balled up the cloth and jammed it into the hole, packing it tight. It wouldn't hold forever, but it would hold long enough.

George stirred, trying to rise. Arthur was at his side in two strides, pressing him back down.

"Stay still, lad."

"The boat—" George's voice was a ragged whisper. "I heard—"

"Mac's still out there. I'm going to fetch him."

George tried to shake his head, then winced. "You can't... go out alone. Not in that."

Arthur looked at his son—at the pale face, the trembling hands, the blood-soaked bandage. Every instinct screamed at him to stay, to protect, to find a way to get George home. But somewhere out there, his boat was fighting for her life, and his crewman was firing a gun he barely knew how to use.

"Fletcher." Arthur's voice was steel. "Take George. Find a ship that'll take you both. Get him to England."

Fletcher's mouth opened, then closed. He looked at George, then at the sea, then back at Arthur. "What about you, sir?"

"I'll come back. I give you my word."

George's hand shot out, gripping Arthur's wrist with surprising strength. "No. Not without you. We go together."

"George—"

"I said no." The boy's eyes burned bright with fever and stubbornness. "I didn't come all this way to lose you now."

Arthur stared at his son. The same jaw, the same unyielding set of the mouth. The boy had his mother's eyes, but that chin was pure Briggs.

Around them, the beach was emptying. The last boats were pulling away. Dawn was coming, grey and cold, and with it would come the Germans.

Arthur made his decision. "Fletcher, get us afloat. And find something we can use to plug that hole properly."

Fletcher nodded and ran off. Arthur knelt beside George, pressing his forehead to his son's.

"The messages," he murmured. "I've still got them. If we don't make it—"

"You'll make it," George said. "You always do."

Fletcher returned with a coil of rope and a scrap of canvas. Together, they dragged the skiff to the waterline. Arthur lifted George into the boat, settling him in the bow, then took his place at the oars.

Fletcher pushed them off, wading into the surf until the water reached his chest, then hauling himself over the gunwale.

"Thought I'd come along," he said, gripping the second pair of oars. "Someone's got to keep you honest."

Arthur opened his mouth to argue, but no words came. He simply nodded, settled his weight, and pulled on the oars.

The skiff surged forward, cutting through the swells. Behind them, Dunkirk burned. Ahead, the Perseverance fought for her life, a tiny speck against a vast and hostile sea.

And between them, the German E-boat turned, its bow swinging toward the small, fragile craft bearing down on it.