Read Chapter 18: The Last Boat

The skiff had been built for pleasure, not war. Arthur knew it the moment his boots hit the slatted floorboards—a day-tripper’s boat, the kind Ramsgate holidaymakers took out for picnics when the weather was fair. It was not fair now. The hull groaned beneath them, and the sea slapped hard against its sides, as if testing the wood’s patience.

Fletcher was already aboard, one hand on the tiller, his eyes fixed on the distant smudge of the Perseverance. George lay in the stern, propped against the gunwale, his face the colour of wet ash. Arthur dragged himself over the side and crouched beside his son, pressing a palm to his chest, feeling the shallow rise and fall of his breathing. The wound had soaked through the field dressing, a dark bloom spreading across George’s ribs.

“He needs a surgeon,” Fletcher said, not looking at them.

“He needs his father’s boat,” Arthur replied. He scanned the water. The E-boat had gone quiet, its guns silent, its silhouette low and predatory against the grey horizon. It had stopped firing at the Perseverance—or the Perseverance was already gone, and the E-boat was hunting something else.

Then he saw it. A puff of smoke from the E-boat’s exhaust. It turned, slow and deliberate, like a dog catching a scent.

And the scent was them.

“Row,” Arthur said.

Three soldiers had piled into the skiff behind them, men who’d emerged from the rubble of the beach like rats from a burning barn, their eyes hollowed out by days of shelling. One of them—a boy, really, no older than George—grabbed an oar without being asked. Another found a length of plank and used it as a paddle. The third was too weak to do anything but cling to the sides and pray.

Arthur took the second oar. He’d spent a lifetime pulling nets, hauling lines, fighting the Channel’s moods. His back was broad, his arms thick with years of salt and rope. But he was not young, and the skiff was heavy, and the sea was fighting him with every stroke.

Then the refugee family appeared.

Arthur hadn’t seen them at first—they’d been hidden behind a stack of crates that the tide had abandoned, a woman and two children, their faces pale with terror. She was clutching a cardboard suitcase to her chest, and Arthur recognised the look in her eyes. It was the same look his wife had worn when the telegram arrived about George’s deployment. The look of someone whose world had already ended, and who was just waiting for the news to catch up.

“Please,” she said. Her accent was thick, Eastern European. “Please, you have room.”

Arthur looked at the waterline. The skiff was already riding low. Five men and a wounded boy. Add a woman and two children, and they’d be lucky to clear the shallows.

“No,” he said.

The woman’s face crumpled. The boy beside her—maybe nine, maybe ten—stepped in front of his mother, his chin raised, his fists clenched. He was dressed in clothes that looked like they’d been bought for a school photograph. He said nothing, but his eyes did the talking.

Fletcher met Arthur’s gaze across the boat. Something passed between them—recognition, perhaps, or the weight of what they’d both left behind.

“Arthur,” George whispered. His voice was barely audible above the lapping water. “Dad.”

Arthur closed his eyes. He saw the photograph in his breast pocket, the one of George in his uniform, standing stiff and proud outside the recruiting office. He saw the empty chair at his kitchen table, the one he’d refused to move for twelve years, ever since his wife passed.

He hated himself for what he said next.

“Get in.”

The woman scrambled aboard, hauling her children behind her. The skiff dipped dangerously, water sloshing over the gunwales. Arthur dug his oar into the sea and pulled.

The E-boat was coming.

“They’ve seen us,” Fletcher said, his voice tight. He was at the tiller, steering them away from the beach, away from the smoke and the wreckage, toward the open water. Toward the dark shape of the Perseverance, still a mile out and getting further.

“Where’s the smoke?” Arthur demanded. “Why isn’t Mac answering?”

“Maybe he’s out of ammunition,” Fletcher said. “Or maybe he’s dead.”

Arthur pulled harder. His hands were raw, the blisters already forming beneath the calluses. The soldier with the plank was keeping pace beside him, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The boy in the school clothes was bailing with his mother’s suitcase, scooping water over the side with his bare hands.

The E-boat’s engine roared. Arthur heard the change in pitch—the throttling up, the sudden surge of speed.

“They’re coming for us,” the praying soldier moaned.

“Shut up and row,” the one with the plank snapped.

Arthur glanced back. The E-boat was closing fast, its bow splitting the water like a knife through silk. He could see the outline of the crew now, the squat shape of the gun on the forward deck. It was a light cannon, but against a skiff it didn’t need to be heavy. One shell. One hit. That would be the end of it.

“Fletcher,” Arthur said, his voice low. “If they fire, get George over the side.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll handle the boat.”

“Arthur, that skiff won’t—”

“I said I’ll handle it.”

The first shot came without warning.

The shell screamed overhead, low and flat, and exploded in the water twenty yards to their left. The blast lifted the skiff, twisting it sideways. Arthur felt the wood shudder beneath him, heard the crack of a seam opening. Water poured in, cold and black.

“She’s holed!” the boy shouted. He was bailing faster now, his small hands a blur.

Arthur wrenched his oar free and jammed it into the wound, feeling the wood grind against the hull, trying to block the flow. It wasn’t enough. The water kept coming.

The E-boat turned, lining up for another pass.

Then Arthur saw it.

A line of smoke on the horizon. A dark, high shape. A steamer, broad-beamed and slow, ploughing its way through the Channel swell. It was heading away from the beach, away from the chaos of Dunkirk, its deck crowded with soldiers, its funnel belching dark coal smoke.

“There,” Arthur shouted, pointing. “A steamer. They’ll see us.”

Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.

The steamer was turning. Its wake curved in a wide arc, pulling it north, away from the E-boat, away from the skiff, away from all of it. The men on its deck were not looking back. They were survivors. They had made it. They were not coming for anyone else.

“They’re leaving,” Fletcher said, his voice flat.

The E-boat fired again.

This time, the shell found its target. It struck the water ten feet from the skiff, and the explosion was a fist of white light and black smoke that slammed into the little boat, throwing Arthur from his feet. He hit the gunwale hard, felt something crack in his side, and tasted blood.

The skiff was sinking.

George was floating.

Arthur lunged for him. The water had gone dark, churned with sand and smoke and oil. He grabbed his son by the collar of his tunic and hauled him back to the boat, but the boat was half full of water, listing hard to port, its seams opening like wounds.

The E-boat was idling now, its engine a low mutter. It was close enough that Arthur could see the faces of the crew—young men, boys really, in grey uniforms, their eyes empty and patient. They were waiting. They were going to watch it happen.

“Get him aboard,” Arthur shouted to Fletcher. “Get him aboard and get him to the Perseverance. That’s an order.”

“What about you?”

“I’m staying with the boat. Keep her afloat long enough for you to clear the kill zone.”

“Arthur, look.”

Fletcher wasn’t looking at the E-boat. He was pointing past it, out to sea, at the steamer.

The steamer had stopped turning.

It hung still on the water for a moment, its hull a dark iron wall against the pale sky. Then, slowly, its smoke changed—a puff of white, then a longer column, then a directed burst that shot sideways from its funnel.

“They’ve seen us,” Fletcher said.

Arthur stared at the steamer. He thought of the sealed order in his breast pocket, still sharp-edged against his chest, still unread. He thought of Thornbury’s message, wrapped in oilcloth, heavy with the names of the dead. He thought of George, his son, bleeding into the bottom of a sinking rowing boat in the middle of a war that was already lost.

The steamer had not turned around.

It was still moving north. Still leaving.

“No,” Arthur said. “They haven’t seen us. They’re just slowing down to clear their props.”

The E-boat’s engine revved. It was starting its run.

Arthur looked at his son. He looked at Fletcher. He looked at the woman and her children, huddled together in the bow, the boy still scooping water with his bare hands.

And he reached into his pocket.

The sealed order was there. So was Thornbury’s message. But beneath them, wrapped in a scrap of oilcloth that Mac had pressed into his palm before he’d sailed, was something else.

A signal lamp.

And a battery.