Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-one, The Customs and Excise Men

They were up early, showered and on the road in plenty of time to catch the ferry home. In fact they arrived nice and early and had to sit and wait for the ferry.

As soon as they got on the ferry they went straight to the self-service restaurant for a full English breakfast, that set them up for the day. They sat and looked out of the ferry window as they sailed away from France and wondered if they would ever do this again. The Artifact was in Rays backpack and he could not resist a quick feel of it, just to reassure himself that it was still there.

The trip back to England was pretty tedious but they had tea several times on the trip and even discovered that a pot of tea cost the same as a cup of tea.  So you learn something new every day, they even decided to have lunch on board rather than stop for motorway food on the long drive home. As far as ferry food goes (on the ordinary side that is and not in the posh restaurants), their lunch was reasonably prised and very nice, well it filled them up anyway.

They spent the last part of the trip up on deck sightseeing as they passed the Isle Of Wight and came into Portsmouth. Ray took a few photos of all the Naval Ships in the harbour as they passed them, especially HMS Warrior, as the ship was restored in their home town.

As they came off the ferry in Portsmouth and queued to get through customs and out of the port, they had no thought of being stopped, as they never had before.  Then a customs man waved them over to one side and pointed them into the shed.

The customs man was unusually friendly as he searched the car, he was very thorough though, eventually he asked to look in the backpack.  Ray reluctantly handed it over but thought it would be ok, after all it was only a strange mettle object.  When the customs man looked inside, he asked what it was.   Ray thought for a moment and answered telling the truth of how he had been given it by the curator from the museum.  The customs man asked them to remain with the car and took the Artifact away with him, two other customs men stepped into view and remained with them.

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Oscar turned the Artifact over in his hands and was surprised as everyone had been by just how cold it felt.  He asked the so called customs man, who was actually from the secret service, to take the bag back to Ray and tell them that the Artifact  has been confiscated.  Give them a receipt for it and tell them we will let them know if and when they can have it back.

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As they drove home they were happy that they had not been arrested but they were also very disappointed that the Artifact had gone.

Ray had the last word on the subject, "Well that certainly made our holiday,  I do not think we will ever enjoy a time away as much as we did this time.  They must know what it is and what it dose, we were just lucky to have it and use it for a short wile.  I am just thankful that they let us go, oh well, it was going to be difficult to keep it all a secret anyway".