Dive in the Sun Read Free Page A

and felt himself pulling back, his stomach contracting violently. He touched his forehead dazedly, feeling the cold layer of sweat which chilled his face into a tight mask. He shuddered violently. Fear. Ice-cold fear. He could almost see his father’s steady, unwavering gaze across the wide, littered desk.
    ‘No guts, my lad! That’s what’s wrong with your generation!’ Then there would be a pause. ‘Now, look at me. A self-made man. Built up this business from nothing, just to give you the chance I never had!’ His father, even across the miles of invisible ocean, his words, his very soul reached out to taunt and torture him.
    Curtis thought of his father, probably sitting behind that same desk, dealing with new orders for light machinery—or whatever he was making now—drumming into his employees how important it was to help the war effort, and, of course, to enlarge the business.
    Beyond the curtain Duncan laughed again, and for a brief instant Curtis felt the tinge of jealousy. Duncan, with his indomitable spirit and unwavering strength. He had served with him long enough to know him better than anyone he had ever met, and he had pictured so often the huge Australian astride his pony on his vast farm, trotting through the dust, exchanging jests with his father or his three brothers, and planning, always planning some new improvement which in itself would entail fresh labour and sweat before anything would show on the shimmering, dust-blown wastes of his untamed country.
    And Taylor, the E.R.A., did he envy him, too? He twisted his head on the coarse pillow as if to banish the nagging fears in his brain. Taylor, the personification of the British working class. Hard, shrewd, but gentle, and with a strange contentment which left Curtis baffled.
    Before it hadn’t mattered. They had all been the closely-knit crew of a midget submarine, the most lonely and the most dangerous section of any navy in the world.
    His mind ground remorselessly on. That had been before Roberts had been killed.
    His lips framed the unspoken words. “Before
I
killed him!”
    He opened his eyes suddenly, his whole body trembling, and stared hard at the shining deckhead. He remembered that day on the depot ship, only a month ago, when young Jervis had arrived to replace Roberts. It had seemed impossible at the time, the cruellest stroke which fate could possibly have played. As the boy had stepped into his cabin, with the bright sun behind him, it was as if Roberts had come back from the dead.
    He had questioned Duncan casually about the frightening likeness, but he had shrugged indifferently and said that there might be some likeness, but not so that you’d notice.
    Curtis clenched his jaw tightly, his eyes watering. Some likeness! Were they blind? Or was he going mad?
    A bell clanged in the engine-room and the beat of the engines slackened. It would be soon now. Soon he and the other three would be sealed in their little craft, and it would be too late.
    He rolled over on to his side, biting at the pillow. Fear, when did it come to him? When did he first notice that the blood of courage had begun to freeze within him?
    Soon it would be too late. The words beat like tiny engines in his skull.
    This was the most dangerous escapade that they had attempted, and the most useless.
    Before, it had been a mad, hit-and-run game, with no time to think, and the wild ecstasy of success to follow. But now, a floating dock in the middle of a hostile coastline, with little chance of survival however the attack turned out, and in addition, he was afraid. Desperately afraid—from his shaking hands, to the dry, bitter taste in his throat. He would refuse to go, and tell himself it was for the others’ sakes and not for his own.
    His father appeared again, mocking him with his smooth, shining face and well-clipped moustache. He knew what he would say all right. He remembered how he had fought desperately against the steady succession of planned moves