The Shipping Forecast

Thames - Part 8

Henry was similarly sloshed and agreed wholeheartedly, so, of course, that became our goal to the exclusion of all else. Including keeping a good look-out. In fact, by the time the first bottle was finished, we had all but completely forgotten about von Moyton and were verging on the brink of singing. So when we shaved down the port side of the It Pays, we reacted in a manner that was totally inappropriate to the seriousness of the situation.

"What ho, old chap! Nice s'night for a sail what!" yelled Henry as the Bandit glanced off the motor yacht and exchanged paint amidships.

"Oops!" I shouted. "Why've you got no lights on? Make's it hard to see you in the dark!"

It took less than a second for Brigham to realise that the yacht he'd just collided with, running with no lights itself, was the Bandit - the very yacht he was expecting to find in the Medway. "HENRY!" he shouted, with a voice that sounded like thunder itself.

Everything went absolutely silent. I could vaguely make out Henry next to me, his face ghostly white in the dark, an expression of abject terror frozen upon his features as he stared astern. The moment was broken by the sound of the motor yacht's engine revving up as it began to swing around. Even my befuddled brain put two and two together quickly enough to realise this must be the owner of the contraband goods on board the Bandit, and that he would be mighty unhappy when he found that we'd chucked a fair portion of the good overboard ...And we certainly didn't want anyone like that to get their hands on the nazi loot.

Henry and I moved at once, both of us heading for the cabin, obviously with the same thought in mind. We collided together, Henry dropping the bottle onto the deck with a crash of broken glass, both of us intent on being first to the cache of weapons in the bunk below.

Henry was cursing continually, a stream of really quite shocking language that somehow served to make the situation a little more bearable. Once we got below we pulled out the canvas wrapped bundles, ripping off the covers to reveal two Sten machine guns and three german rifles.

"Are you certain there's no ammunition, Henry?"

"What? Ammo? There's no ammo, Charles. Just the guns."

I gave Henry an incredulous look and said, "Then why in hell are we getting these things out if we've nothing to actually shoot with!"

"I'm sorry Charles! I never - but they don't know that! Maybe we could bluff it."

I could have given Henry a right earful right then if time hadn't been so short. The motor yacht would almost certainly be alongside in a minute, the Bandit having come to a stop as with no-one on the tiller, there was no way to stop the yacht turning into the wind. The sails flapped as they spilled the wind. If we didn't do something soon, we were lost. "Open those boxes and see what's inside. Maybe there will be some bullets or something."

Bluff it, Henry had said. Yes, perhaps that would have to do. I couldn't think of anything better, other than just giving up and surrendering, but surrender had never been something I'd done all through the war and I was damned if I was going to do it now. I left Henry rummaging in the locker and went back on deck, a trusty - but empty - Sten gun held in my hands.

The motor yacht was approaching as I emerged from the cabin. Someone pointed a search lamp at the Bandit - a somewhat less powerful and more discrete one than that on von Moyton's trawler - and a hail came across the water.

"Don't come any closer!" I yelled, brandishing the Sten gun so that the crew of the motor yacht could see it clearly. "We don't want any trouble, but if you try to board us, I'll rake you from bow to stern!" The threat felt weak, even to me, yet the motor yacht came to a stop some thirty feet away.

"Who are you? You're not Henry. Where is he?" The voice that came across the black water was the same one that had called out for Henry earlier.

"He's er... indesposed ... down below ... seasick," I said, lamely. "Who are you? if you don't mind me asking."

"I'm the man who's going to rip your head off if you don't put that down and let me onboard. I want my stuff! I haven't got all night and you can't stand there poncing around with that piece of old iron all night, neither, so do us all a favour and put it away."

The brute was right of course. Eventually I would either have to capitulate to his demands or suffer the consequences of taking the bluff to the bitter end, and I suspected that other guns with bullets to spare were pointed at me in the darkness. It was a futile situation, and only a miracle could save us now.

And a miracle was what we got. Fate had presumably gotten bored by then and shuffled off to bother someone else, leaving Luck to sweep in and dance merrily across the sea to find us in need of a huge dose of it. Not that it appeared that way at first...

"Don't do anything rash, gentlemen, or my men will shoot!" That shout had come from behind! I turned around and saw von Moyton, backlit by the lights onboard his trawler as it edged towards us from the other side. He must have made it back to his boat and come across the bank as the tide rose, following in our wake once more. Damn the man. Damn them all and their bloody silly criminal games. It looked like the game was up, and no matter what happened next, Henry and I seemed to have lost.