They left the dinghy to drift and everyone scrambled down through the hatch except Fenelon, who walked along the hull and climbed the ladder to the conning tower. He stood looking up at the freighter for a moment as the two vessels drifted apart, and on the Kontoro there was a strange, uncanny silence.
The two sailors dismounted the machine-gun and disappeared. Fenelon remained only a moment or two longer before following. The conning-tower hatch clanged shut, the sound echoing flatly across the water.
On the Kontoro it was as if a spell had been broken and everyone surged forward to the rail. Janvier had never felt quite so helpless in his life before and for some unaccountable reason was strangely close to tears.
In the distance the wind was already beginning to lift the waves into whitecaps and he remembered the gale warning. L’Alouette sank beneath the waves like a grey ghost, the tricolour waved bravely, then that too disappeared and there was only the sea.
CHAPTER TWO
TO SUP WITH THE DEVILA thin sea fog rolled in from Southampton Water as the taxi turned the corner and pulled into the kerb. Anne Grant peered out through the window at the dim bulk of the building rearing into the night.
The original structure had been Georgian, so much was obvious, but the years had left their mark. A line of uneven steps lifted to the door, the paint cracked and peeling in the diffused yellow light of a street-lamp. Above it a small glass sign said Regent Hotel.
She tapped on the partition and the driver opened it. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“Regent Hotel, Farthing Lane. That’s what you said and that’s where I’ve brought you,” the man replied. “It’s only a doss-house, lady. The sort of place sailors come to for a kip on their first night ashore. What did you expect – the Rite?”
She opened the door and got out, hesitating for a moment as she gazed up at the damp, crumbling facade of the hotel. Except for the lapping of water against the wharf pilings on the other side of the street, it was completely quiet. When a cafe door was opened somewhere in the middle distance the music and laughter might have been coming from another planet. She gave the driver ten shillings, told him to wait and went up the steps.