Read Online And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat - Free Book Online

starboard bow, cursed viciously, swung the helm hard over and rammed down the throttle. Someone cast off the falls and we swung bucking and jolting into the muttering darkness.
    There were perhaps four hundred vessels of every size and shape gathered at our rendezvous some seven miles off the coast of Sicily, and the muted putter of their engines blended into one pervasive rumble as if of some uneasy giant in restless sleep.
    Standing in the bows beside the coxswain’s cubbyhole I could just manage to peer over the high gunwales. The night was full of looming shadows, and the heaving waters were patterned with the glimmering phosphorescent wash of unseen boats. A sudden lurch caught me off balance and I stumbled back into the lap of Corporal Hill who, as if this had been some awaited signal, was immediately sick all over my back and shoulders. His example was infectious and men were soon retching their hearts out from one end of the boat to the other. I clawed my way back to the rail and fought my own rising nausea by staring fixedly at a pinpoint of green light on the stern of some unseen craft ahead of us.
    Rupert Brooke’s “A Channel Passage” came unbidden into mind and I remembered his remedy for seasickness—think hard of the girl you love: Now there’s a choice—a sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!
    “You fucking cow!”
    The cox swore stridently as the boat breasted a heavy sea and fell off sideways into the trough.
    “You she-bitch female fucker!”... whereupon he too was sick.
    The interior of the boat was becoming something of a shambles.
    As she pitched and yawed, the mass of men slid helplessly up and down the benches, their feet in a broth of their own vomit. Some were pleading with me to let them go to the gunwales; but I dared not even let them stand, for assault landing craft were notoriously unstable in rough water and could easily turn turtle if the weight shifted from one side to the other. To my surprise I found myself taking real command of my platoon for the first time.
    “Don’t anyone bloody well move,” I shouted over the guttural roar of the diesel engine, “or we’ll all be in the drink, and it’s too damn far to swim!”
    Nobody made a move to disobey me, perhaps because they were too sick; and I was feeling rather marvellous until the cox reached out of his cubby, caught my arm and pulled me close.
    “We’re fucking well lost, ducky! Can’t find no bleedin’ marker buoy! Wot yer wanter do?”
    He had been searching for a floating marker that bore coded lights—blue over white over blue—the rendezvous point from which we were to steer a compass course to our designated beach. Without that fixed departure point we were lost indeed. And since my boat led the company, mine was the responsibility.
    Panic engulfed me. There was nobody I could call on for help. In the first glow of the false dawn I could just make out the box-like shapes of the other two craft dimly visible astern. I glanced at my watch and saw that zero hour was only minutes away. There was no time, nor was this heaving ocean the place for a conference!
    Frantic, I tried to guess where we might be. Dead reckoning might have given a real sailor some clue but I had never been more than a playtime sailor. The eastern horizon was rapidly lightening. The balloon would be going up any moment now! I swallowed hard, and in a voice that shrilled like a tin whistle gave the cox an order.
    “Steer 340 degrees!”
    It was the proper course (indelibly fixed in my memory) but only if followed from the correct departure point.
    Obediently the little vessel swung off and headed for the unseen land. Moments later a necklace of bright-red jewels floated eerily into the northern sky off our starboard bow. The first enemy gun had opened fire! From the stern I heard Bates bawl: “There goes the ball game, boys!”
    Idiotically I bellowed back: “Take cover, men!”
    Then the waning night was ripped asunder by such an eruption of