Slowly they swam back to the ledge where Nobby was awaiting them. He said they had been away for an hour and twenty minutes, so it was not surprising that they had felt cold. With numbed fingers they put on their clothes and climbed gloomily up the cliff. By this time the walking over sharp rocks had cut their socks and padding to pieces, so that they were marching almost barefoot, a very painful operation.
On their rejoining the party, the sad tale of failure was told. As the time was 3 A.M., the only thing to do was to get into the best cover we could find near the coast and sleep till dawn. About a hundred yards inland we lay down in some small bushes beneath stunted pine-trees. There we slept.
Our thirty-fifth morning found us in a state of great depression. There seemed no chance left of getting out of the country. Lying in our hiding-places we reviewed the situation in an almost apathetic mood.
We were on the eastern side of a W-shaped bay, a mile wide, and opening southwards. Its eastern arm was the creek, in which was the boat we had failed to capture. There was a similar western arm, the two creeks being separated by a narrow spit of land. From quite early in the morning motor-lorries could be seen and heard winding their way along the tortuous road. In several places this closely followed the coast line, and at one or two was carried on causeways across the sea itself. We lay on a headland on the seaward side of the Turkish encampment, and were overlooked by the look-out post on the cliff-side.
At noon a council of war was held. As we were lying dotted about some distance from one another, for the time being we all crept into an old shelter made of branches, not many yards from us. There matters were discussed. Although several schemes were put forward, going back to the ravine in which we had spent so many wearisome days was not one of them. To return there would have made us into raving lunatics. The final decision was to make another attempt that night to seize the boat; this time there should be four of us in the water. If that failed, about the most attractive proposal was to go boldly on to the coast road and by bluff obtain a lift on a motor-lorry, demanding as Germans to be taken in a westerly direction to the nearest big town, Selefké: we might get a boat of some sort there. The chief lure of this scheme was that, should the lorry-driver believe our story, we should cover a few miles without walking on our flat feet. This was a fascinating thought indeed, for despite nearly a fortnight on the coast we had no wish to set out on the tramp again.
Two or three of us, however, thought we might sum up the energy to march eastwards along the road in the hope of finding a boat in the bay of Ayasch. But even if we did this there was still the difficulty about food and drink. Unless we replenished our supply we should have to undertake a sea voyage of at least a hundred miles with only two days' rations and perhaps a water-bottle full of water apiece. The consensus of opinion was thus come to that if we failed again that night we might as well give ourselves up the next day. We then went back into our old and safer hiding-places.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon we heard the sound of a far-off motor. This was no lorry. It came from a different direction. In a few seconds we were all listening intently.
"It's only another lorry after all!"
"No, it can't be. It's on the sea side of us!"
As the minutes passed, the noise became more and more distinct. Then our hearts leapt within us, as there came into the bay, towing a lighter and a dinghy, the motor-tug which we had last seen the day after we had reached the coast. Skirting the shore not three hundred yards from where we lay, the boats disappeared into the eastern creek.