way the evacuation had operated. The small craft hadn’t set off on their own. That had been considered much too dangerous. They’d been organized into convoys led by naval destroyers.
“You’ve got to go back to Dover,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard against the sound of the chugging engine and the wet, salt-laden wind. “The Navy—”
“The Navy?” the Commander snorted. “I wouldn’t trust those paper-pushers to lead me across a mud puddle. When we bring back a boatload of our boys, they’ll see just how seaworthy the Lady Jane is!”
“But you don’t have any charts, and the Channel’s mined—”
“I’ve been piloting this Channel by dead reckoning since before those young pups from the Small Vessels Pool were born. We won’t let a few mines stop us, will we, Jonathan?”
“Jonathan? You brought Jonathan? He’s fourteen years old!”
Jonathan emerged out of the bow’s darkness half dragging, half carrying a huge coil of rope. “Isn’t this exciting?” he said. “We’re going to go rescue the British Expeditionary Force from the Germans. We’re going to be heroes!”
“But you don’t have official clearance,” Mike said, desperately trying to think of some argument that would convince them to turn back. “And you’re not armed—”
“Armed?” the Commander bellowed, taking one hand off the wheel to reach inside his peacoat and pull out an ancient pistol. “Of course we’re armed. We’ve got everything we need.” He waved one hand toward the bow. “Extra rope, extra petrol—”
Mike squinted through the darkness to where he was pointing. He could just make out square metal cans lashed to the gunwales. Oh, Christ. “How much gas—petrol—do you have on board?”
“Twenty tins,” Jonathan said eagerly. “We’ve more down in the hold.”
Which is enough to blow us sky-high if we’re hit by a torpedo.
“Jonathan,” the Commander bellowed, “stow that rope in the stern and go check the bilge pump.”
“Aye, aye, Commander.” Jonathan started for the hatch.
Mike went after him. “Jonathan, listen, you’ve got to convince your grandfather to turn back. What he’s doing is—” he was going to say “suicidal,” but settled for “against Navy regulations. He’ll lose his chance to be recommissioned—”
“Recommissioned?” Jonathan said blankly. “What do you mean? Grandfather was never in the Navy.”
Oh, Christ, he’d probably never been across the Channel either.
“Jonathan!” the Commander called. “I told you to go check the bilge pump. And, Kansas, go below and put your shoes on. And have a drink. You look like death.”
That’s because we’re going to die, Mike thought, trying to think of some way to get him to turn the boat around and head back to Saltram-on-Sea, but nothing short of knocking him out with the butt of that pistol and taking the wheel would work, and then what? He knew even less than the Commander did about piloting a boat, and there weren’t any charts on board, even if he could decipher them, which he doubted.
“Get yourself some dinner,” the Commander ordered. “We’ve a long night’s work ahead of us.”
They had no idea what they were getting into. More than sixty of the small craft that had gone over to Dunkirk had been sunk and their crews injured or killed. Mike started down the ladder.
“There’s some of that pilchard stew left,” the Commander called down after him.
I don’t need to eat, Mike thought, descending into the hold, which now had a full foot of water in it. I need to think. How could they be going to Dunkirk? It was impossible. The laws of time travel didn’t allow historians anywhere near divergence points.
Unless Dunkirk isn’t a divergence point, he thought, wading over to the bunk to retrieve his shoes and socks.
They were in the farthest corner. Mike clambered up onto the bunk to get them and then sat there with a shoe in his hand, staring blindly at it, considering the possibility. Dunkirk had been a major turning point in the war. If the soldiers had been captured by the Germans, the invasion of England, and its surrender, would have been inevitable. But it wasn’t a single discrete event, like Lincoln’s assassination or the sinking of the Titanic, where an historian’s making a grab for John Wilkes Booth’s pistol or shouting “Iceberg ahead!” could alter the entire course of events. He couldn’t keep the British Expeditionary Force from being rescued, no matter what he did. There were too many boats, too many people involved, spread over too great an area. Even if an historian wanted to alter the outcome of the evacuation, he couldn’t.