Read Chapter 4: The Stragglers

The sea had gone quiet. That was the worst of it. After the storm and the wreckage field, the water lay flat and grey as slate, and the only sound was the steady, laboring thump of the Perseverance's engine. Arthur stood at the wheel, jaw set, eyes on the hazy smear of horizon that hid the French coast. Tom was forward, coiling rope with the kind of care a man took when he needed his hands busy to keep his mind still.

Mac sat slumped against the wheelhouse bulkhead, the canvas bag clutched across his chest like a child’s toy. He hadn’t spoken since they pulled him from the water. Twice Arthur had tried to get him to eat. Twice Mac had shaken his head, eyes fixed somewhere Arthur couldn’t follow.

“Skipper.” Tom’s voice came low, urgent, the way it did when he’d spotted a shoal nobody else had seen. “Port bow. Half a mile, maybe less.”

Arthur stepped out of the wheelhouse, shading his eyes against the low sun. For a moment he saw nothing but water. Then he caught it—a low, dark shape riding the swell, too broad and too heavy to be driftwood. It took another ten seconds for the shape to resolve into something worse.

A lifeboat. A naval cutter’s lifeboat, judging by the high bow and the oars shipped along the sides. It was crowded. Men in sodden khaki packed the thwarts, some slumped, some waving—a single arm raised and falling with the motion of the sea. Even at this distance, Arthur could see the arm was not waving. It was hanging limp, moving only because the boat was moving.

“Jesus.” Tom’s voice cracked. “They’ve been out here awhile.”

Arthur killed the engine and let the Perseverance coast. The lifeboat was closer now, close enough to see the faces. Young faces, mostly. A few older. One man’s head was wrapped in a bloody bandage. Another sat with his back to the gunwale, staring at nothing, hands open in his lap. The man nearest the bow had a greatcoat over his shoulders, officer’s rank tabs on the collar, but the coat was slick and dark with seawater. His chin was down on his chest.

“They might be Germans,” Mac said, his voice a dry rasp. First words he’d spoken in three hours.

Arthur glanced at him. Mac’s eyes were on the lifeboat, and there was no fear in them—just a tired, terrible wariness. A man who’d learned to trust nothing on this sea.

“No.” Arthur shook his head. “Those are our boys.”

He didn’t know how he knew. The cut of the uniforms. The way the boat had no motor, just oars and a mast stepped but no sail hoisted. Germans would have taken them ashore as prisoners. These men had been left to drift.

“Tom. Fenders out. Mac, get ready to take a line.”

“Skipper—” Tom started.

“I know.”

They were a mile off the mine-buoyed route, heading into the most contested stretch of water on God’s earth. Every minute they lingered was a minute a Stuka could find them. But Arthur had seen his son’s handwriting on a page of censored paper, and these soldiers in the boat were somebody’s sons too.

Perseverance came alongside with a soft thump of wood on rubber. The lifeboat’s occupants stirred, some hands reaching up. Tom grabbed the first wrist, and then the work began.

They were in worse shape than they looked. Men who couldn’t stand. Men with wounds gone septic, gone grey underneath the grime. Arthur worked the ladder and the gunwale with Tom, hauling bodies aboard—there was no other word for it, hauling bodies—while Mac finally stirred himself to help, steadying the boat, passing down the water can.

It took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of men crying out when they had to move, twenty minutes of Tom muttering reassurances he didn’t believe. When the last man was aboard, the lifeboat rode high and empty, bobbing on the grey water. Arthur looked at it for a second, then turned away. Let her drift. The sea could have her.

“How many?” Arthur asked.

“Fourteen,” Tom said. “Two dead already. They slid them over the side before we came alongside.”

Fourteen living. Two dead. Arthur ran a hand over his face. There was bunks for six below, and no doctor aboard. He’d been a trawler skipper, not a nurse. But he had a first aid box, and he had experience setting a joe’s broken arm when the nets had gone wrong in a blow. It would have to do.

He moved among them, checking the worst. Most were the walking wounded—or the lying-down wounded, to be honest about it. But one caught his eye.

A lieutenant. Young—George’s age, maybe younger. He lay stretched on the deck with his head propped on a coiled rope, his uniform torn open at the chest, where a field dressing had gone dark and crusted. His lips moved.

Arthur knelt. The boy’s eyes were open, but they had the fog in them that came before the end. Still, when Arthur leaned close, those eyes found him and held.

“You’re safe,” Arthur said. “You’re on a British boat. Heading back.”

The lieutenant shook his head. The movement cost him; his face twisted, and he coughed, flecks of red appearing at the corner of his mouth. “No. Not safe. Not yet.”

“Easy, son.”

“Listen.” The lieutenant’s hand came up, clasping Arthur’s wrist with surprising strength. “I was with the 51st. We held the line at the canal. But there’s something—something you have to take.”

“Take where?”

“London.” The boy’s hand tightened. “Admiralty. It’s—” Another cough, worse this time. Blood on his lips. “It’s in the boat. I kept it safe. I promised. But I can’t—” His eyes searched the deck, frantic, understanding draining from them.

“Easy,” Arthur repeated. “You tell me. I’ll make sure it gets there.”

The lieutenant’s gaze steadied on Arthur’s face. Whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him. “My coat,” he said. “Inside pocket. Sealed envelope. There’s a day’s wait—that’s what they need the Admiralty to know. There’s a day’s wait before they break. But our flank’s gone and Jerry knows it. The message is—” His voice caught. More blood. Arthur pulled a rag from his pocket, pressed it to the boy’s mouth. The lieutenant pushed it away, his eyes burning.

“Tell them the time is the thing. Not the place. The time. If they don’t know the time, they’ll lose the lot.”

“What time?” Arthur asked.

“They’ll know.” The lieutenant’s grip tightened, a spasm of desperate force. “Tell them. From the Soldier’s Lieutenant. Tell them the time.”

Then his hand went loose, and his head dropped back, and the fog came down over his eyes.

Arthur stayed there a long moment with his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Tom appeared at his elbow, silent, holding the officer’s greatcoat. It was heavy with seawater, but when Arthur slid his hand into the inside pocket, he felt the stiff crackle of paper. He drew out a rectangular envelope, sealed with wax now gone soft and blurred. The address had run. But it was official—he could see the watermark when he angled it toward the sky.

He tucked it inside his own oilskin, next to the flask of tea.

“He’s gone,” Tom said quietly.

Arthur looked down at the lieutenant’s face. The boy couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. There’d been no time to ask his name.

“We care for the living first,” Arthur said. But his hand pressed the envelope against his chest, and he didn’t move for another long second.

A message for London. For the Admiralty. From a dyin’ officer who’d held the line at a canal and called himself nothing but the Soldier’s Lieutenant. And a dead officer before him—Mac’s officer—with a canvas bag of something he’d given his life to bring home.

Arthur had come across the Channel for a simple thing: a son on a beach. But England was starting to pile its own weight on his shoulders.

He stood, turning to the wheelhouse. The enemy guns were waiting somewhere ahead, hidden in the haze of the French shore. And now, in his pocket, he carried two messages that had to get through.

“Get the wounded below,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”