Free Silence Over Dunkerque by John R. Tunis

There was little Ricky could do, for even the supply of blankets was short, and many lay without protection from the damp chill off the water.
    By this time it was late afternoon. From below, Ricky could hear the voice of Mr. Bennet mention fuel-line trouble.
    “Hand me that spanner.... Now loosen the other one.... Good. Turn her over.”
    Suddenly the boat shivered, the engine throbbed, sputtered, started. Everyone on board looked up, listening. Ricky stood on deck, a basin of water in his hand. On that engine depended their escape. They could well be in what was called E-boat Alley, the stretch along the French coast patrolled by German E-boats, or they might be drifting with the tide toward the French coast and a prison camp for the duration of the war. Every heart lifted as the motor caught a few seconds. Then it died another death. The heads of the wounded in the cabin sank back upon their berths.
    At this moment the sound of voices came through the fog. Plainly they were British, faint at first, then louder. An engine was turning over smoothly, they could distinguish its regular throbbing somewhere close at hand. Everyone able to stand came on deck, shouting through the fog. Mr. Bennet rushed up with a Very light signal pistol, and shot off several cartridges.
    “Help!”
    “Ahoy there....”
    “Help! Help!”
    Now they could make out voices. It was unbelievable that those on the other vessel should not hear their shouts. But the noise of its motor faded into the dimness around.
    “At least,” a soldier suggested, “we must be on the correct course.”
    But were they? How could they know? Was the other ship on course, or wandering, confused in the fog, like Shropshire Lass? There were no parallel rulers, no dividers on board, the compass had been broken by the falling bombs.
    After the long days of suffering and agony, this uncertainty told on them. Tempers got shorter. Some cursed their luck for being on the boat, forgetting the destroyer blown up before their eyes.
    Gradually everyone slumped down, steeped in fatigue. No sounds were heard except for the groaning of those in pain and the cries, now mostly delirious, of several badly wounded men. Only the twins, with the Chief and the mechanic, were awake. Occasionally their low tones or the tinkering with the engine came faintly to the deck where Ricky had been sent forward to watch.
    A half a dozen times he heard, or thought he heard nearby, the sound of voices, and started yelling through the fog. It was getting darker when a shape loomed silently through the mist, and before it veered away, he caught sight of a group of men in khaki, packed together on a small flat barge, a wide, unfamiliar-looking vessel.
    This time they had been seen. A foghorn sounded. Noises and shouts came from the barge, died away, grew louder. In a minute the boat appeared through the fog on the starboard bow. She had turned completely around them. A line fell across the deck of Shropshire Lass. The boat was a Dutch schluyt, a flat-bottomed canalboat. Her deck was thick with half-frozen men in tattered khaki, and she was even lower in the water than the motorboat.
    The Chief boarded the Dutch boat and had a conversation with the skipper, who spoke bad English. One look at the ancient motor of the canalboat told him she could never tow another vessel. They stood on deck, uncertain, surrounded by the listening, cold, anxious troops. Suddenly there was a noise. The powerful Thornycroft engine on Shropshire Lass started with a roar. She trembled, the motor throbbed decisively. Ten minutes later the two vessels started off through the fog.
    It grew colder as the night went on. A wind rose, the boats tossed unpleasantly as the sea became choppy, and Shropshire Lass shipped a little water. Many of the soldiers became sick. Then they began to realize the fog was vanishing. Just before daybreak, the dim outline of Shakespeare Cliff loomed ahead, and under a starlit sky they crept past the