‘Get Reynolds up on to the hull. He’s to get the two steel tow-lines and attach them to the rear of Bert. I need a hammer over here, too. This chap’s got some iron stakes – if we can fix the tow-lines to them it may stop Berk sinking any deeper while we think up something.’
‘OK.’
While he was waiting the farmer began to make a great effort to tell him something in a few words of English, spacing out the words one by one in his anxiety to convey the message.
‘Stop… stop… there!’ He pointed at the tank. ‘I bring big big wood.’ He was gesturing madly, scooping his hand as he pointed at the tank again. ‘Big wood. Back soon. You wait.’
What the hell else can we do, Barnes wondered. Colburn had reacted quickly and he threw the hammer into the pool of light from the tractor just before the machine was driven off. To start with, Barnes had to hammer the stakes down in the dark, but once he had them firmly embedded he held the torch in his left hand and hammered with his right. Reynolds had attached the two lines to the rear of the hull long before Barnes had driven in the stakes so deep that he thought they should hold up Bert for at least a while, at least until the farmer came back, if he came back.
The quagmire was an eerie place at night and even though it was now completely dark he could see the tank’s silhouette outlined against its own lights. The shadows of Reynolds and Colburn waited on the hull and somewhere far above them a squadron of planes flew through the night at a great height. It was still very warm and muggy and the mosquitoes were active now, biting the back of his neck. He was only satisfied when the stakes were several feet into the ground and then he flashed his torch to show the edge of the quagmire.
‘Before you throw me the tow-lines, is Bert still sinking?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Colburn’s voice. ‘I think the tank’s balanced on the island for the moment but it’s still badly tilted at the back.’
‘As far as I could make out that farmer is coming back with a load of heavy wood. That’s all I could get but I imagine he’s got some idea of bridging this gap. Now, I’ll stand well back, Reynolds, so throw me the first line.’
The loop landed within inches of the stakes where Barnes had left his lighted torch on the ground. He wrapped the line tightly round the stakes close to the ground and then passed the end through an iron ring. When the second tow-line arrived he repeated the process. Now all they could do was to wait, hoping that the farmer would come back and that he would bring something they, could use. Occasionally he called out to the men on the tank, but carrying on a conversation across the quagmire seemed pretty unsatisfactory so soon they said nothing and the minutes dragged by with agonizing slowness. Leaving the headlights on bothered Barnes because this drew attention to them from the road, but he decided that they must risk keeping them on to make sure that the farmer could find them. They waited a whole hour before lights appeared across the field behind them, and then the tractor chugged across the grass and pulled up close to the bank. Barnes ran forward to see what the farmer had brought, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything until the man pointed to behind the vehicle. He had dragged across the field two immense beams of wood which were attached to the back of the tractor by chains. While the farmer undid the chains Barnes measured their length by pacing. About ten feet long. He would have put the distance between the shore and the front of the tank at twelve feet, but that was only a rough guess. They’d just have to try it, anyway – as a fighting vehicle Bert might just as well be at the bottom of the swamp as immobilized on that island when daylight came. He stood on the bank and explained the plan carefully to Colburn and Reynolds, but that was the easy part. He now had to explain it to the farmer, and this was only achieved by careful gesturing. It became clearer when Reynolds had thrown two coils of rope on to the bank, and then they started.
The first stage involved careful cooperation between Barnes and the farmer because the wooden beams were enormously heavy and extremely unwieldy. They tied one rope tightly round the end of the longest beam and then began to invert it so that the roped end was lifted over their heads. As the huge beam rose higher and higher Barnes kept a firm grip on the loose end of the rope. The beam was slowly moving up to the vertical but the really tricky part was coming when they tried to Control its falling movement as it passed beyond the vertical, lowering it under control so that the far end could be dropped just below the right-hand track and form a bridge to dry land – if the beam would reach that far. The beam reached its apex and began to topple. They just managed to prevent it crashing down as they both held-on to the rope, and the farmer was sensible enough to let Barnes guide its controlled fall. It dropped lower and lower, scraped the front end of the right-hand track and settled. Would it begin sinking or had they managed to prop it on the tip of the island? The lights of the tractor were again beamed directly on the tank and as far as he could tell the beam was stable.
‘Nice work,’ shouted Colburn. ‘Looks OK to me.’
‘Right. Now for the next one.’
The second beam was successfully manoeuvred in direct line with the left-hand track, but it fell short. Not more than a foot, Colburn informed him, but it had fallen short of the island and was sinking slowly. Slowly? Barnes wondered – did that mean it had settled on a patch of fairly firm ground? The quagmire must be unusually solid at this particular point if a beam of such enormous weight was sinking slowly – whereas Barnes had felt his leg knifing through the -mud. They’d just have to risk it, and at least they had the two beams placed so that they formed a bridge from the present position of the tank to the shore. He reached up and felt his shoulder gingerly. He’d ripped that wound open again. When he was lowering the second beam he had been aware of a slow tearing sensation and now he could feel stickiness round the edge of the dressing. He set about enlisting the farmer’s aid for the final, possibly fatal, stage, and this time he was able to explain quickly what he wanted by sign language. They undid the tow-lines from the iron stakes after the farmer had reversed his tractor, then re-attached them to the rear of the tractor, Barnes tried to explain that he must synchronize his movements with those of the tank – that they must both move at the same moment, and he hoped to God that the farmer understood that the signal would be when Barnes shouted ‘Maintenant’. Now. Since the farmer went on repeating the word about two dozen times Barnes felt that he had probably grasped it. Now to get back to the tank.
He was careful to choose the right-hand timber and when he walked along it he lit his way with his torch beam which splayed over the edge, showing a gleam of insidious ooze waiting for him where the crust had broken. Reaching the tank, he checked the position of the timbers. The right-hand one was fine, perfect, in fact, but the left-hand one wasn’t at all good. The breadth of the gap between timber and island looked more like eighteen inches. He explained it carefully to Reynolds.
‘You’ll have to reverse back along exactly the course we came over – then the tracks will move along the beams. This isn’t going to be a picnic and you might as well know what could go wrong. The beams could crack under Bert’s weight, and they probably will at some stage. One of them could slip off this island after we’ve started. Or your tracks could slip off the beams – take your choice.’
‘Not much of a choice, is it, Sergeant? But we can’t stay here.’
‘That’s the whole point – we’ve got to risk it. You’ll have to follow my orders very precisely. I’ve fixed up with that farmer chap to shout "Maintenant" when we’re coming, and I’ll do that as soon as you start moving. He’ll drive his tractor like hell to help pull us out – every extra bit of power might just turn the trick. That’s why he’s revving up now.’