be at the bottom of it, Mike thought. And she won’t need a U-boat to do it. He looked around the hold. There was a tiny galley with a Primus stove against one wall and a scarred wooden table against the other. On it were a messy heap of maps and charts, a half-empty bottle of Scotch, a flashlight, several large cork floats, and an opened can of either sardines or bait. Against the other wall were two lockers and a bunk with a tumble of gray blankets.
The Commander got down on his knees and reached down through the trap. The bilge pump coughed and then died.
There is no way I am going anywhere on this, Mike thought, even to Dover. I’ll just have to find another boat. But the men on the dock hadn’t exactly been full of suggestions. Let’s hope Powney’s driving into town right now.
Commander Harold did something else to the bilge pump, and this time it chugged for a full minute before dying. “Needs a bit of oil is all,” he said. He splashed over to the galley, lit a fire under a coffeepot, and began rummaging through the pile of charts. “The Navy’s gone soft, that’s what’s wrong with it.” He unearthed an opened can of potatoes and then a doubtful-looking mug. “You know what they feed ’em on board ship nowadays? Tea with milk and sugar! You wouldn’t see Nelson drinking tea! Rum, that’s what we drank, and hot coffee!” He poured a cup and handed it to Mike. Mike took a cautious sip. It tasted like it looked.
“You should see what they sent—now, where did I put it?” the Commander said, attacking the mess on the table again. “I know it’s here somewhere—aha!” He fished a letter out of the heap and handed it to Mike with a triumphant flourish. “The Small Vessels Pool sent that letter four weeks ago.”
The Small Vessels Pool. That was the “Smale Vises School” Mr. Tompkins had been mumbling about. And this was the letter they’d sent out at the beginning of May asking small craft owners if they’d be willing to volunteer their boats for service in case of invasion or other “military emergency.”
“Sent one of their bloody forms along with it,” the Commander said. “Six pages long! I wrote ’em back the very same day, volunteering the Lady Jane and me for service.”
I’ll bet you didn’t tell them about the broken bilge pump, Mike thought, or the four inches of water in the hold.
“And haven’t heard a word since,” the Commander was saying. “Four weeks! It took Hitler less than half that to take over Poland! If they’re running the war in France the way they’re running the Small Vessels Pool, they’ll be surrendering to Hitler a fortnight from now!”
No, they wouldn’t, thanks to a ragtag armada of motor launches and fishing smacks and pleasure boats who’d arrived to rescue them in the nick of time. But the Lady Jane wouldn’t be among them. It would never make it out of the harbor, let alone across the Channel and back. And there was no way he was going to let the Commander take him up to Dover in it. Which meant he’d better get back to the Crown and Anchor so he wouldn’t miss Mr. Powney. “I’ve got to be going,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee,” and tried to hand the mug back to the Commander.
“You can’t go till you’ve seen the Lady Jane. This is her engine.” The Commander lifted another trapdoor to reveal an ancient-looking motor, black with grease. “You won’t find an engine like that nowadays.”
Mike could believe that.
“And you won’t find a more seaworthy boat,” he said, splashing through the water to show Mike a locker containing grapples, a tangle of ropes, and a signal lantern. There was a bucket in the locker, too.
Good, Mike thought, because the water’d risen at least an inch since they’d been down here.
The Commander took him up on deck to show him the bridge. There was no sign of Daphne, and the three fishermen were still in the same place. The Commander showed him the bridge and the wheel and then dragged him to the rear of the boat to see the gunwales, the anchor, and the propeller, delivering lectures as he did on her seaworthiness and the modern Navy’s shortcomings, then below again to show Mike his charts. “I don’t hold with all this modern navigation,” he said, pointing to a clock in the