When the touch persisted I tried to brush it away.
Fingers gripped my arm and squeezed. A voice hissed in my ear: “Listen! You must wake up.”
It was the lascar sailor, Sanjay.
“What? What is it?”
He clamped his palm across my mouth and shushed me, holding my neck so I could neither twist away nor cry out. “I must tell you,” he said urgently. “The others. Haji. They plan—”
He never completed the warning. There was a cry of rage behind Sanjay and a whistling sound. Something hit Sanjay in the back of the head and he fell across me, pinning Robert and me against Number 7’s rail.
From the other end of the boat came a despairing groan of pain and then a thrashing splash as someone was launched overboard.
“Strike, my brothers,” the lascar known as Haji shouted. “Strike now! All the food and water for us. No one will ever know.”
The attack was timed to fall just before dawn, when the men standing watch were at their lowest ebb.
By the faint light of predawn I saw three natives wrestling in the stern with Officer Browne. One of them swung a hand axe at Browne’s face. It was the cramped space that saved him, because two of the attackers were in the way of the blows aimed by the third.
Two more of the lascar sailors were slumped on their bench, taking no part in the struggle.
Then my attention forcibly returned to my own peril. Haji raised an oar to club at my head. “Kill and throw the Christians out!” he yelled.
Unable to move, I watched in horror as the paddle began its descent.
“No!” Peter cried, popping up alongside me. He lifted both arms to ward off the blow. Haji shrieked with rage. The blade of the oar glanced off Peter’s outstretched hands. Though he managed to deflect it from me, the heavy wooden club hit Peter in the forehead, and he dropped across Mariah.
Drawing back the paddle for another blow, Haji jabbed it at me like a lance. As I hunched my shoulders and tried to roll aside to shelter Robert, Haji thrust the oar into my ribs.
I cried out with pain as something cracked. My vision swam, and I struggled to remain conscious.
James from one side and John from the other flung themselves on Haji. As James wrestled with the lascar for possession of the oar, his brother slammed a fist into Haji’s face. The native staggered backward, losing his grip on the weapon.
Suddenly I could again see the battle going on at the stern. While Podlaski shrank away in terror, Barrett grappled with one of the attackers while Browne faced off against two more.
Where was Matt Wilson? Why wasn’t the sailor, the strongest, fittest man aboard, helping us?
The native wielding the hatchet raised it to strike. Seeing the danger to Browne, Barrett shoved his opponent into the others. The blow of the axe landed, but it fell on the neck of a lascar and not on Browne. The wounded man screeched and threw himself out of the boat.
John had the oar now. Sweeping it around him with a flat swing, he struck Haji in the side. The native retreated, stumbling over his unconscious comrades.
Browne struggled with the pocket of his jacket, while dodging more blows of the axe. Browne and Barrett faced off against two remaining opponents.
Where was Wilson?
Browne had a gun. He produced a small revolver from inside his watch coat and threatened the native assailants with it. “Drop your weapons and sit down!” he ordered.
As John tried again to strike Haji with the paddle, I watched the lascar wave a knife. It flashed menacingly in the pale light. Haji ducked another blow of the oar, then lunged with the blade aimed at John’s arm.
The echoing boom of a gunshot shattered the air.
The bullet hit Haji behind the right ear. With his dying leap he fell headfirst into Raquel, who was shielding her girls and Connor.
I could not maintain consciousness any longer.
As blackness swirled in front of my eyes, I heard Browne respond to a question from Barrett. “Sanjay’s dead. So are Haji and the one in the water. Missus Murphy and Peter are wounded.” As his voice faded away, I heard him add, “Wilson’s dead too. They killed him first.”
There were more stars shimmering in the sky than I knew existed. I thought how strange it was that on my last night alive heaven seemed closer to me than earth.
I knew the peace of surrender. My spirit was letting go of my body. I was slipping away, and I knew it. I hardly knew if I was still breathing or merely floating above the human misery of Number 7.
Then I moved and gasped. Pain in my rib cage was a reminder that I lived on.
Peter lay exhausted and bruised at my feet. His bandaged brow oozed a dark spot of blood. Did he have a concussion? My ribs screamed agony when I drew a breath. I was certain from the intensity of the pain they had been cracked by the blow of the lascar’s oar.
I searched the horizon for the bright constellation of Orion. Peter had once told me that he thought Orion marked the location of heaven. I wondered if we would soon know whether his guess was correct.
Barrett sat at rigid attention between us and the lascars. Barrett’s silhouette blocked my view of the surly band of mutineers. I wondered, without compassion, if the men who tried to murder us were also suffering from their wounds. Would they survive long enough to be tried and hanged for what they had done? I hoped Brown would give their share of the water to the children come morning.
As if Barrett heard my thoughts, he turned and looked at me. “Are you all right, Elisa?”
Even speaking caused a dagger of white-hot pain to surge through my left lung. “Okay,” I gasped.
The playwright said, “You need a doctor.”
I was unable to reply that all I really needed was a cool drink of water and a solid place to lie down.
Mariah answered bitterly, “Too right we need a doctor. The wog broke her ribs with that oar.”
I tried to reply but my breath caught. “Oh!”
Barrett’s face was close to mine. For the first time I could see his left eye was swollen shut. Blood matted his hair. “You’ll live, Elisa Murphy. If any of us in this boat manages to survive, you will be among them.”
I did not know why Barrett singled me out for such a prophecy. I only shook my head and fixed my gaze upon Orion.
Raquel sighed. “We have all lived through too much to die.”
Barrett cleared his throat. “Yes. Tough. You ladies are tougher than I. That’s certain. Elisa? You, Raquel. Your kids. You must live. I pray you will live. However, I don’t think that I…will. Live, I mean.”
I thought of Murphy and wondered if, after two long weeks, he had given me up for dead. If he was awake, did he look at the same stars and wonder how I liked heaven? Would he ever know what had happened to those of us in Lifeboat Number 7? Would he sense the moment I breathed my last?
Barrett reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out an oilskin-wrapped package. “Here, Elisa. You keep it. That poor little girl. Lindy. You must live, Elisa. You were last to see Lindy alive. Here is her journal. She had a premonition, you see. She wrote a last letter to her mother. You must survive to carry the message home. In person. You must place Lindy’s account—all that remains of the dear girl’s life—into the hands of her grieving mum.” He pressed Lindy’s journal into my hands. “That is why you must live, Elisa.”
My fingers clamped around the dead girl’s last testament. I resented the responsibility Barrett had given me. Another reason to try, to go on.
I nodded and managed to whisper thanks to Barrett. I would do my best to survive, I promised. I would do my best to be the angel messenger returning Lindy’s last words home to her grieving mother.
The boat rocked. I could see around Barrett for a moment. Our enemies were heaped upon one another in exhaustion as Browne, wide awake, sat erect in the stern with the revolver in his hand. His was the first watch, guarding the mutineers.
I wondered if it mattered now. Perhaps by this time tomorrow many more of us would be dead.
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From the shadows little Connor said quietly, “One more day. If we can hold on, one more day.”
Mariah whispered agreement, “Maybe tomorrow. The gulls. We saw the gulls.”
I prayed silently, One more day, God. Help us hold on. Only one more, and then? What will You do? God, what will You do for us…tomorrow?
The sail hung limply from the rigging. A cross sea slapped the boat’s hull, reprising the twelve-count petenera, but giving our journey neither impetus nor direction.
How many days had we been adrift in Lifeboat Number 7?
I could no longer remember, nor did it seem important.
Despite our reduced numbers—only seventeen people remained alive—last night we had run out of water. For two days prior we had eked out a barely continued existence on four ounces of water supplemented by any drinkable fluid. Now the canned milk was gone. Likewise exhausted was all the syrup from the juice cans.
Scraping the bottom of the water tank with the dipper produced flakes of damp rust.
Cedric Barrett tried to swallow the oil in which the sardines were packed. It made him violently ill and left him thirstier than before.
No one else made the attempt.
There were only two surviving lascars. They had both been mutineers, so were supposed to be under arrest and guarded day and night by Barrett or Browne.
Even that no longer seemed to matter. Number 7 was full of bodies either sprawling like cast-aside rag dolls or curled into tight balls of misery.
The overcast day admitted very little light and no hope.
Idly, I thought of my desire to write of my love and prayers for Murphy and my children. It might have been possible two days earlier. Now it was not. Even if I could muster the will to make the attempt, I doubted if my fingers would hold the pencil.
I hoped my precious children would have someone to love them and cherish them and tell them stories about me from happier times. My mother would do that for me, I knew.
A vision of Lindy’s mother came to me. I saw her sitting at a table, staring out a window across the rolling East Sussex hills. How long would it take before she no longer jumped up at every knock on the door? How many tears would flow before she stopped punishing herself for having put Lindy on the transport ship?
I had doubly failed Lindy’s mother: I had not protected her child, and I had not survived to carry Lindy’s love home. At least I would die and be released from my guilt.
I would see Lindy soon enough; of that I was certain, and I knew she would forgive me.
When I put on my hundred-year glasses I knew Lindy’s mother would also forgive me. So would Murphy and Katie and Louis and Charles. When we met in heaven, they would all forgive me for not coming home as I had promised.
There was a roaring in my ears when there was no wind. Was it the sign of my approaching death? Whether my last breath came during this gray, fog-shrouded half light or during the blackness of night, that did not seem to matter either.
“A plane,” Connor’s tiny voice croaked. He sounded like the bleating of a newborn lamb.
The roaring increased.
John roused himself from where he lay against his brother’s shoulder. Through swollen, cracked lips he slurred, “He might be right.”
James waved feebly at the veil of vapor overhead. “Never see us…anyway.”
This final taunting angered me. Ships had turned away, whales had offered pretend rescue, fog banks had mimicked safety…now this?
“Jesus,” I said. “Help.”
Engine sounds roared past overhead. The airplane sounded close enough to touch, certainly close enough for us to be seen.
Another craft motored past us. We might as well have already been in a watery grave instead of buoyed upon it.
Tomas sponged his brother’s forehead with a brine-dampened rag. “Whole flight…of them. Wish we could…shout.”
Connor stood on unsteady, quaking legs. “I’m going…I’m going to climb the mast.”
Hallucinating for certain. The child had no strength with which to climb. Even if he did, what good would it do?
Or what harm? Anyway, I had no energy with which to stop him.
Hand over hand, Connor managed it. Halfway up the mast he missed a grip and almost fell. His tin whistle dropped from his pocket, bounced on the railing, and splashed into the sea.
I watched him climb, certain his body would likewise plunge into the ocean.
While I lay there, looking up, something astonishing happened. It was as if the edge of an unseen hand sliced downward through the clouds and swept a portion of them aside. As cleanly as the bow of my violin sawed across the strings, that precise a gap appeared in the fog.
I stared into clear blue sky…in time to witness a floatplane with British markings fly past and leave us behind.
“Flare,” Browne said, lunging to his feet and falling over Podlaski. “Flare!”
Connor reached the top of the mast. “Another one’s…coming.”
Barrett fumbled with a smoke canister. The igniting ring broke off in his hand.
Browne snapped open the breach of the flare gun but could not locate the shells.
The drone of the flight of planes was diminishing. A last lone member of the group appeared behind the others. In seconds it too would be gone.
Reaching inside his jacket Connor drew out the pocket handkerchief he had offered his mother at the train station. Clinging to the swaying mast with one hand, Connor waved the small scrap of white. “Down here. Look here. We’re here.”
The plane was already beyond us. I groaned as I realized the pilot could no longer see us. The twelve-count rhythm of the waves was fully victorious at last.
Connor continued to signal valiantly. I did not have the heart to tell him he was wasting what little strength he still possessed.
And then the note sung by the floatplane’s engines changed.
“Sunderland flying boat,” James offered to no one in particular.
The machine, which had dwindled to a black speck, began to grow larger again. “Seen us!” Connor said triumphantly.
He was right.
Within minutes a rubber life raft was dumped from the plane. It plunged into the sea near us and when it bobbed up again, Browne, Barrett, and John paddled Number 7 toward it.
Lashed to the raft was a supply of food, which we could not use, and five one-gallon jugs of water.
There was also a handwritten note: Have called for help. Will circle until they arrive to direct them to you. Don’t worry. If fog closes in, I will land near you. Thank whoever signaled us. Navigator spotted it at the last second.
Within an hour a sardine fishing boat out of Galway steamed alongside us. It took another hour for the crewmen to carefully hoist us aboard and lay us amid their nets.
Only Connor was able to climb from Number 7 into the trawler under his own power.
Three hours later we sailed past the Aran Islands and into Galway Bay.
We had been twenty miles from Ireland when we were rescued.
Connor—and his mother’s pocket handkerchief—had saved us.
23
GALWAY, IRELAND
AUTUMN 1940
Some days after our rescue I awakened in the bedroom of a white-plastered, two-room, thatched-roof cottage overlooking Galway Bay. The local doctor, Ignatius O’Toole, stood over me with a look of satisfaction on his ruddy face.
“Well done. Ye’ll live,” he pronounced.
Murphy was at my side. He had hitched a ride from England on a military cargo plane when news of our rescue came over the wire at the TENS office.
He received instructions for my care from the physician, who was grateful to hand me off to another and hurry to deliver a baby. Murphy and I were alone. I spoke for the first time in days as tears brimmed in his eyes. “The children?” I managed.
Murphy took my hand. He replied, knowing completely which children I meant. “You did good, my darling. Except for Patsy’s two l
ittle ones lost in the beginning, all the kids on Number 7 are alive and well.”
“Where?”
“Staying with local families.”
“Will they go home again? to England?” I thought of those who would never return to their waiting loved ones. Lindy’s notebook was on the lamp table beside my bed.
“We’re arranging transport for the kids. Back to their families in England. Elisa…” He kissed my fingertips. “It may be awhile before we’re able to get back to the U.S.”
“They’ve shut down the evacuation?”
“Several merchant ships have been sunk this week. Too dangerous for kids to cross to America. And Elisa, too dangerous for you to try again.”
I closed my eyes as warm tears spilled out. I silently prayed for strength. I thanked God our own babies had made it across the Atlantic before the deadly German U-boat attacks had been ramped up. “Okay, Murphy. Your mother and father…I can’t think of a better place for our children. Stiff upper lip?”
“There’s my girl. We’ll do what we can over here.”
“The others?”
“Mariah has taken Raquel and her girls home to her father’s farm.”
“Poor man. Mariah was so worried about him. Losing Patsy and the little ones. I never saw such a courageous woman as Mariah.”
“Officer Browne told me. He says a woman is like the makings of a cuppa tea. You never know how strong she’ll be ’til she’s in hot water. Seems he’s developed a liking for Irish tea. He tells me he has fallen in love with Mariah.”
I smiled faintly. “And she with him. A good man. We wouldn’t have made it without him.”
“There’ll be an Irish wedding to celebrate, come St. Bride’s Day, I think.”
The healing of my broken ribs was slow. The recurring nightmares of our ordeal receded day by day as Murphy held me in the night and kept me on a steady emotional keel. Weeks passed too quickly. Autumn turned to winter. I had come to love the peace of Ireland. For the first time in years, I forgot about the war.
News about England’s fate and the Blitz and the widely expected Nazi invasion trickled in days after the events. The protective flock of RAF pilots finally pushed back the assault of the German Luftwaffe, ending the Blitz for the time being. Churchill declared to the world on the wireless, “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”