Those in Peril Read Online Free

up and put it firmly back on the quayside. The engine started up first go and he set off downstream.
    The steep and rocky riverbanks, crowned with pine trees, were golden with summer gorse. He had passed Kerdruc before he realized that the cat must have jumped back on board again. It came into the wheelhouse, wandered around and rubbed itself against his legs. Too late to take it back, he decided. And anyway the animal looked like a homeless stray – nothing but skin and bone with dull, mangy fur and a tail as thin as a rat’s. When he had picked it up it had weighed almost nothing. He shrugged. It might as well take its chances in England as in France. If it didn’t fall overboard en route.
    As soon as he left the safe shelter of the estuary, the wind and the North Atlantic waves grabbed hold of the Gannet , tossing her about. He held her on a north-westerly course, ploughing along the south Brittany coastline, the boat pitching and rolling. The cat had retreated to a corner of the wheelhouse and was clinging to the deck with its claws. From time to time Duval chewed on some bread and cheese or sausage or ham, drank some of the wine, or smoked a cigarette. Seasickness had never bothered him. Nor did it seem to trouble the cat, who, crouched in its corner, devoured the scraps he threw to it.
    It took him more than six hours to reach the Pointe de Penmarch and begin the long haul across the Baie d’Audierne, and another seven to gain the other side. Navigating a course round the treacherous granite fortress of the Pointe du Raz with its vicious tidal streams took all his concentration. He had timed it well and the tide was still with him, but the wind force increased and the surge and swirl of the sea and the pull of the current swept the Gannet perilously close to the rocks. A huge wave swamped the boat and he lost his grip on the wheel and was hurled into the corner. He lay stunned for a moment until he could scramble back and yank the boat clear of the rocks. The cat had lost its grip as well and was swirling around in seawater, scrabbling wildly with its paws. He seized it by the scruff of the neck and threw it into the locker before it could be swept overboard.
    Then, once round the headland, he passed suddenly and miraculously into calmer waters. The wind had dropped and the temperature risen, the waves flattened to a mere swell. He set his course due north for the port of Brest, counting on another three hours of daylight. The cat, when he let it out of the locker, went back to its corner and started trying to groom its sodden fur. He doubted that he looked much better – soaked to the skin and with a lump on his forehead where he had hit it that felt the size of a pigeon’s egg.
    Around two o’clock in the morning he reckoned that Brest must be ahead on his starboard bow. The temptation to steer for its harbour was very strong but he resisted it. The Germans could well have taken the town already and the risk was too great. He pressed on, checking his course regularly and fortifying himself with more snacks and more wine and some nips of brandy, feeding more scraps to the cat who was invisible now except for the glint of its eyes in the torchlight. He followed a course that kept him well away from the reefs and islets and jagged rocks that infested the Brittany coast, and by dawn he had sighted the Ile Vierge lighthouse. There he turned his back on France and headed north towards Falmouth in England. Some dolphins came and played alongside the boat for a while and an RAF plane circled overhead a few times before it, too, left him alone. In the distance, he caught sight of a large convoy of merchant ships steaming north-east before they were lost to view.
    In the early evening of the second day, the engine faltered and died. It took time to discover the cause of the trouble – a blocked carburettor – and to deal with it and, by then, he knew that the south-westerly wind and the tide