Then the Perspex in the nose gave way, letting in a waterfall of icy black salt water.

Silver grabbed the strap of the dinghy out of the deluge and shoved the whole bundle up through the hatch ahead of him. We were both in water to our waists in the dark and it was impossible to get a firm foothold. I managed to push Silver out after the dinghy, one of his feet in the palm of my hand and the other on my shoulder—I don’t think he even realized he was standing on me. The Blenheim’s wings kept her from going straight to the bottom of the sea, but they were full of holes like the rest of her and filling up fast.

Somehow I hauled myself through the hatch after Silver, and we knelt clinging to each other on the starboard wing, slippery with seawater as the swell washed gently over it and back. Silver got the cover off the dinghy, but he couldn’t get the inflating valve unscrewed, which we’d only ever seen demoed once, and the distance between pretending you’re doing something in a drill and actually doing it in the dark in the middle of the North Sea is like the distance between yourself and the shores of Scotland while you’re floating there on your sinking plane.

“Let me do it,” I said, thinking of his chilblained fiddler’s fingers. “Keep your gloves on.”

I had to take off my gauntlets to release the valve. They were both instantly lost. Seconds before the Blenheim submerged beneath us, I finally got the dinghy to inflate. We didn’t have time to climb into it. All we could do was hang on as the plane went down.

Our flight suits were full of icy water now, and it was like wearing armor made of lead. Neither one of us had the superhuman strength it would take to lift ourselves up over the side of the dinghy and into it. In five minutes I couldn’t feel my hands at all.

So that was us, hanging on to a life raft we couldn’t get into, up to our necks in water so cold it made every breath painful, under the most spectacular moon and starry sky I have ever seen.

“Sod this,” said Silver through chattering teeth.

“Aye.” It was too hard to breathe to try to talk.

“No, I mean sod this. Sod moral fiber. I can’t do it. I’m d-d-d— I’m done. Thanks for b-being my pilot, Jamie. And my f-f-friend. If you make it b-b-back to Nancy’s, take my tanner out of the ceiling and b-b-buy yourself a drink on me.”

And then the bastard just let go.

Ellen: