South by Java Head

CHAPTER NINE

It hardly deserved the name of island. An islet, perhaps, but no more. Oval in shape, lying almost due east and west, it was no more than three hundred yards long, and about a hundred and fifty from north to south. It wasn't a perfect oval, however: about a hundred yards along from the apex the sea had cut deep notches on both sides, at points practically opposite one another, so that the islet was all but bisected. It was in the southerly bight ― Nicolson had taken the precaution of rounding the island before landing ― that they had beached their boats and moored them to a couple of heavy stones.

The narrow end of the island, east beyond the bights, was low and rocky and bare, but the west had some vegetation-scrub bushes and stunted lalang grass ― and rose to a height of perhaps fifty feet in the middle. On the southern side of this hill there was a little hollow, hardly more than a shelf, about half-way up the slope, and it was towards this that Nicolson urged the passengers as soon as the boat had grounded. The Captain and Corporal Fraser had to be carried, but it was only a short trip and within ten minutes of the boats' grounding the entire party had taken refuge in the hollow, surrounded by all the food, water supplies and portable equipment, even the oars and the crutches.

A light breeze had sprung up with the going down of the sun, and clouds were slowly filling up the sky from the north-4east, blanketing the early evening stars, but it was still light enough for Nicolson to use his glasses. He stared through them for almost two minutes, then laid them down, rubbing his eyes. He was aware, without being able to see, that everybody in the hollow was watching him anxiously ― all except the boy who was bundled up in a blanket and already drowsing off to sleep.

"Well?" Findhorn broke the silence.,

"They're moving round the western tip of the island, sir, Pretty close inshore, too."

"I can't hear them."

"Must be using their batteries. Why, I don't know. Just because they can't see us it doesn't mean that we can't see them. It's not all that dark."

Van Effen cleared his throat. And what do you think the next move is going to be, Mr. Nicolson?"

"No idea. It's up to them, I'm afraid. If they had either their big gun or A.A. gun left they could blast us out of here in two minutes." Nicolson gestured at the low ridge that bounded the hollow to the south, barely visible in the gloom even six feet away. "But with a little luck I think that'll stop rifle bullets."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Time enough to worry about that when it happens," Nicolson answered shortly. "Maybe they'll try to land men at various points and surround us. Maybe they'll try a frontal attack." He had the glasses to his eyes again. "Whatever happens they can't just go home and say they left us here ― they'd get their heads in their hands, perhaps literally. Either that or hara-kiri all over the shop."

"They won't go home." Captain Findhorne's voice was heavy" with certainty. "Too many of their shipmates have died."

For some time there had been a murmur of voices behind them, and now the murmur died away and Siran spoke.

"Mr. Nicolson?"

Nicolson lowered his binoculars and looked over his shoulder.

"What do you want?"

"My men and I have been having a discussion. We have a proposition to make to you."

"Make it to the captain. He's in charge." Nicolson turned away abruptly and raised the binoculars again.

"Very well. It is this, Captain Findhorn. It is obvious ― painfully obvious, if I may say so ― that you do not trust us. You force us to occupy a separate lifeboat ― and not, I think, because we don't bathe twice a day. You feel ― wrongly, I assure you ― that you must watch us all the time. We are a heavy ― ah ― responsibility, a liability, I should say. We propose, with your permission, to relieve you of this liability."

"For heaven's sake get to the point," Findhorn snapped irritably.

"Very well. I suggest you let us go, have no more worry about us. We prefer to be the prisoners of the Japanese."

"What!" The angry interjection came from Van Effen. "God in heaven, sir, I'd shoot the lot of them first!"

"Please!" Findhorn waved a hand in the darkness, looking curiously at Siran, but it was too dark to see his expression.

"As a matter of interest, how would you propose to surrender yourselves. Just walk off down the hill towards the beach?"

"More or less."

"And what guarantee would you have that they wouldn't shoot you before you surrendered? Or, if you did succeed in surrendering, that they wouldn't torture or kill you afterwards?"

"Don't let them go, sir." Van Effen's voice was urgent.

"Do not distress yourself," Findhorn said dryly. "I've no intention of complying with his ridiculous request. You stay, Siran, although heaven knows we don't want you. Please don't insult our intelligence."

"Mr. Nicolsonl" Siran appealed. "Surely you can see―――"

"Shut up!" Nicolson said curtly. "You heard what Captain Findhorn said. How naive and dim-witted do you think we are? Not one of you would risk his precious neck if there was the slightest chance of being shot or ill-treated by the Japs. It's a hundred to one―――"

"I assure you――-" Siran made to interrupt but Nicolson stopped him.

"Save your breath," he said contemptuously. "Do you think anyone would believe you? You're obviously in cahoots with the Japs, one way or another ― and we have enough on our plates without making ourselves the present of another seven enemies." There was a pause, then Nicolson went on thoughtfully, "A pity you promised this man to the gallows, Captain Findhorn. I think Van Effen went to the heart of the matter at once ― it would simplify things all round if we shot the lot of them now. We'll probably have to do it later on anyway."

There was a long pause, then Findhorn said quietly: "You are very silent, Siran. You miscalculated, perhaps? Almost your last blunder? You can be very grateful, Captain Siran, for the fact that we are not callous murderers of your own stamp. But please bear in mind that it will require very little provocation indeed for us to carry out the suggestion just made."

"And just move back a bit, will you?" Nicolson asked. "Right to the edge, there. And maybe a quick search of your pockets wouldn't do any harm, either."

"Already done, Mr. Nicolson," the captain assured him. "We took a whole arsenal off them after you left the saloon last night… Still see that sub?"

"Almost due south 'of us now, sir. About two hundred yards offshore."

He suddenly dropped the binoculars and pushed himself back down into the hollow. A searchlight had just been switched on in the conning-tower of the submarine, its dazzling white beam swinging rapidly along the rocky shore of the island. Almost at once it found the little notch in the shoreline where the lifeboats lay, steadied there for a couple of seconds, then started moving slowly up the hill, almost in a line with the hollow where they lay hidden.

"Brigadier!" Nicolson's voice was sharp, urgent.

"It'll be a pleasure," Farnholme grunted. He slid the carbine forward along the ground, cradled it to his shoulder, sighted and fired, all in one swift movement. It was set for single shot firing, but the single shot was enough: through the fading echoes of the crash of the carbine they caught the distant tinkle of glass, and the white glare of the light faded quickly to a dull red glow, then died away altogether.

"Stay with us a few more days, will you, Brigadier?" Findhorn said dryly. "I can see that we're going to need you around… Hardly a very bright move on their part, was it, Mr. Nicolson? I mean, they've already had a sample from the Brigadier here."

"Bright enough," Nicolson differed. "A calculated risk, and it paid off. They've found out where the boats are and they know now, from the flash of the brigadier's rifle, where we are, two facts it might have cost a landing party a long time and a good few lives to find out. But it was really the boats they were worried about, not us. If they can stop us from leaving the island, they can get us at their leisure, preferably in daylight."

"I'm afraid I agree with you," Findhorn said slowly. "The boats come next. Sink them from the sub, you reckon? We can't stop them if they do."

"Not from the sub." Nicolson shook his head. "They can't see the boats and it would take them all night to sink them with random fire: a hundred lucky shots at least. A landing party to knock the bottom out of the boats and spike the air tanks is more likely ― or tow them or row them out to sea."

"But ― but how do they get ashore?" Vannier asked.

"Swim if they have to, but they don't have to. Most subs carry collapsible or inflatable dinghies of some kind. For a sub operating in close waters, almost certainly in contact with their own troops on a score of different islands, it would be essential."

No one spoke for several minutes. The little boy was muttering to himself in his sleep, and Siran and his men were whispering in the far corner of the hollow, their words indistinguishable. Then Willoughby coughed to catch their attention.

"The flood of time is rolling on, etc., etc.," he quoted. "I have an idea."

Nicolson smiled in the darkness. "Careful, Willy." "Base envy hates that excellence it cannot reach," Willoughby said loftily. "My plan has the simplicity of true genius. Let us sail away."

"Brilliant." Nicolson was heavily sarcastic. "Muffled oars in the moonlight. How far do you reckon we get?"

"Tush! You underrate me. Willoughby soaring in the realms of pure thought and our worthy chief officer still trudging in the mire. We use the engine, of course!"

"Oh, of course! And how do you propose to persuade our pals out there to wear ear-plugs?"

"I don't. Give me an hour on that exhaust-pipe and baffle plates and I guarantee you won't hear that engine a hundred yards away. Lose some speed of course, but not much. And even if they do hear it, you know yourself how difficult it is to get a bearing on a faint sound over the sea at night. Freedom beckons, gentlemen. Let us no longer delay."

"Willy," Nicolson said gently, "I have news for you. The human ear is not to be depended on for finding bearings at night, but then the Japs don't have to depend on it. They use hydrophones, which are very accurate indeed ― and which couldn't care less whether you muffle the exhaust or not as the propeller thrash in the water will serve them excellently."

"Damn them," Willoughby said with feeling. He lapsed into silence, then spoke again. "Let no one despair. Willoughby shall think of something else."

"I've no doubt you will," Nicolson said kindly. "Don't forget that the north-west monsoon only lasts for another couple of months or so and it would be handy if ― down, everybody, down!"

The first bullets were thudding soggily into the earth around them, ricocheting with a vicious whine off the rocks and whistling evilly overhead as they heard the barrage opening up from the deck of the submarine. It had moved a good deal closer inshore and it sounded as if at least a dozen different guns, machine-guns, two at least, included, were all firing at once. And someone aboard the ship had been fast enough to take a bearing on the flash of Farnholme's carbine: the fire was as accurate as it was heavy.

"Anybody hurt? Anybody hurt at all?" It was difficult to hear the captain's low, hoarse voice above the crackle of gunfire.

There was no immediate reply, and Nicolson answered for the others. "I don't think so, sir. I was the only one exposed at the time."

"Good enough ― and no retaliation just now," Findhorn warned. "No reason for anybody to get his head blown off." He lowered his voice with evident relief. "Mr. Nicolson, this baffles me completely. The Zeros didn't touch us when we left the Virotna: the sub didn't try to sink us: and the seaplane left us alone even after we'd thumped their pals. And now they're trying their best to massacre us. It doesn't make any kind of sense at all to me,"

"Still less to me," Nicolson admitted. He winced involuntarily as a bullet thudded into the earth a couple of feet above his head. ù" And we can't stay here and do an ostrich act, sir. This is a cover for an attack on the boats. Pointless otherwise."

Findhorn nodded heavily in the darkness. "What do you want to do? I'm afraid I'm a dead loss, Johnny."

"As long as you're not just dead," Nicolson said grimly. "Permission to take some men down to the shore, sir. We must stop them."

"I know, I know… Good luck, boy."

Seconds later, in a brief lull in the firing, Nicolson and six men slithered over the edge of the bank and started downhill. They hadn't gone five paces when Nicolson whispered in Vannier's ear, caught the Brigadier by the arm and retraced his steps with him to the eastern edge of the hollow. They lay down on the edge, peering into the darkness. Nicolson put his mouth to the Brigadier's ear. "Remember, we play for keeps."

He could just sense Farnholme nodding in the darkness.

They didn't have to wait long. Within fifteen seconds they heard the first faint, cautious slither, followed at once by Findhorn's voice, sharp and hoarse, jerking out a question. There was no reply, just another ominous movement, a swift rush of feet, the sudden click as Nicolson's torch switched on, the brief glimpse of two running stooping figures with upraised arms, the stuttering crash of Farnholme's automatic carbine, the heavy thud of falling bodies and then the silence and the darkness together.

"Bloody fool that I am! I'd forgotten all about these." Nicolson was crawling about the hollow, torch hooded in his hand, tearing away weapons still clenched in dead hands. He let the light play on them for a moment. "The two hatchets from number two lifeboat, sir. They'd have made a pretty mess at close quarters." He shone his torch at the other end of the hollow. Siran was still sitting there, his face smooth and expressionless. Nicolson knew that he was guilty, guilty as hell, that he had sent his three men to do the hatchet-work ― literally ― while he remained safely behind. He also knew that the bland, inscrutable face would remain that way as Siran denied all knowledge of the attack: dead men couldn't talk, and the three men were quite dead. There was no time to waste.

"Come here, Siran." Nicolson's voice was as expressionless as Siran's face. "The rest won't give any trouble, sir." Siran rose to his feet, walked the few paces forward and toppled to the ground like a falling tree trunk as Nicolson struck him viciously behind the ear with the butt of his Navy Colt. The blow had carried sufficient weight to crush the skull, and it had sounded like it, but Nicolson was on his way even before Siran had fallen, Farnholme at his heels. The whole episode hadn't taken thirty seconds from start to finish.

They ran at full speed, uncaringly, down the slope, stumbling, slipping, recovering and racing on again. Thirty yards' from the beach they heard a sudden flurry of shots, screams of pain, oaths, high-pitched voices shouting some insane gibberish, another volley of shots then the sounds of more blows, of struggling and violent splashing as men fought hand to hand in the water. Ten yards from the water's edge, well ahead of Farnholme by this time, and still pounding along at the full stretch of his legs, Nicolson switched on his torch. He had a confused impression of men struggling furiously in the shallow water round the boats, caught a brief glimpse of an officer poised above a fallen McKinnon with a sword or bayonet swung back for a decapitation stroke and then leapt, one arm round the officer's throat and the gun exploding in his back, before he landed cat-like on his feet. Again his torch swung up, steadied for a moment on Walters and a Japanese sailor thrashing and splashing as they rolled over and over in the mud-stained water: nothing to be done there ― as easy to kill the one as the other. The beam lifted, and stopped again.

One of the lifeboats, well aground, was lying almost parallel to the shore. Two Japanese sailors, knee-deep in the water and sharply profiled in the harsh glare of the torch, were standing close by the stern, one of them stooping with bent head, the other upright, arm upraised, his right hand far behind his head. For a long second of time, all volition inhibited by the light that blinded their shrinking eyes, the two men held their respective positions, a frozen sequence from some nightmare ballet: and then, in perfect unison, petrified stillness yielded to convulsive action, the stooped man straightening with his right hand clutching something snatched from the net bag tied to his belt, the other dropping his left shoulder and lunging forward as his throwing arm came flashing over, and Nicolson, even as he brought his Colt up, his finger tightening on the trigger, knew that he was already too late.

Too late for Nicolson, too late for the Japanese sailors. For a second time they stiffened into immobility, brought up short by the savage jerk of some invisible hand, then they began to move again, slowly, this time, very slowly, pivoting forward with an almost ponderous deliberation on rooted, lifeless legs: Nicolson's torch had switched off and the crash of Farnholme's carbine was only an echoing memory as they fell on their faces, one full length into the water, the other jack-knifing heavily over the gunwale of the lifeboat and crashing on to the sternsheets, the sound of his falling lost in a flat explosive crack and sheet of blinding white as the grenade exploded in his hand.

After the bright light of the bursting grenade the darkness was doubly dark. Darkness everywhere, on land, over the sea and in the sky, complete and, for the moment, impenetrable. Away to the south-west a last few stars winked faintly in an indigo sky, but they too were going, extinguished one by one as the unseen blanket of cloud closed with the horizon. Dark, and very silent; there was no sound, no movement at all.

Nicolson risked one quick sweep with his lighted torch, then clicked off the switch. His men were all there, all on their feet, and the enemy were the enemy no longer, just little dead men lying still in the shadows. They had had next to no chance at all: they had expected no attack, deeming the Viroma's crew safely pinned in the hollow by the submarine's covering fire: they had been silhouetted against the sea, always lighter by night than the land: and they had been caught at a crippling disadvantage in the moment of stepping from their rubber boats into the sea.

"Anybody hurt?" Nicolson kept his voice low.

"Walters is, sir." Vannier matched his tone with Nicolson's. "Pretty badly, I think."

"Let me see." Nicolson moved across to the source of the voice, hooded the torch with his fingers and clicked the switch. Vannier was cradling Walters's left Wrist in his hand: it was a gaping, gory wound just below the ball of the thumb, and half the wrist was severed. Vannier already had a handkerchief twisted as a tourniquet, and the bright red blood was pulsing only very slowly from the wound. Nicolson switched off the light.

"Knife?"

"Bayonet." Walters's voice was a good deal steadier than Vannier's had been. He prodded something lying still and shapeless at his feet in the water. "I took it from him."

"So I gathered," Nicolson said dryly. "Your wrist's a mess. Get Miss Drachmann to fix it for you. It'll be some time before you can use that hand, I'm afraid." Which was one way of saying 'never,' Nicolson thought bitterly to himself. The clenching tendons had been severed clean through, and it was a certainty that the radial nerve had.gone also. Paralysis, in any event.

"Better than the heart," Walters said cheerfully. "I really need that."

"Get up there as fast as you can. The rest of you go with him ― and don't forget to announce yourselves. For all the captain knows we lost ― and he's got a gun lying handy. Bo'sun, you stay with me." He broke off suddenly as he heard splashing in the vicinity of the nearest lifeboat. "Who's there?"

"Me, Farnholme. Just investigatin', old boy. Dozens of them, actually dozens of them."

"What the devil are you talking about?" Nicolson asked irritably,

"Grenades. Bags full of 'em. Fellow here like a walkin' arsenal."

"Take them away, will you? We may need them. Get someone to help you." Nicolson and McKinnon waited till the last of the men had gone, then waded out towards the nearest lifeboat. Just as they reached it, two machine-guns opened up from the darkness to the south, tracer bullets burning white then extinguishing in vicious plops and gouts of water. Now and then a freak ricocheted off the water and whined thinly into the darkness: more rarely still a bullet thudded solidly into one or other of the lifeboats.

Stretched full length behind a boat, only his head above water, McKinnon touched Nicolson on the arm. "What's all this in aid of, sir?" The soft Highland voice was puzzled, but completely unworried. Nicolson grinned to himself in the darkness.

"Anybody's guess, Bo'sun. Chances are that their landing party was supposed to signal ― torch or something ― if they landed safely. Alarums and excursions ashore and our pals on the sub climbing the walls with uncertainty. Finally, they open up ― no signal."

"And if that's all they're wanting, why shouldn't we be sending them one?"

Nicolson stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then laughed softly. "Genius, McKinnon, pure genius. If they're all confused, and if they imagine their pals ashore are as confused as they are themselves, any old signal has a chance of getting by."

And so it proved. Nicolson raised his hand above the lifeboat gunwale, flashed the torch irregularly on and off, then hurriedly withdraw his arm. To any trigger-happy machine-gunner that pinpoint of light must have been the answer to a prayer, but no line of tracers came lancing at them out of the darkness. Instead, both machine-guns abruptly ceased fire and all at once the night was silent and still. Land and sea alike might have been deserted; empty of all life: even the blurred silhouette of the submarine lying quietly out to sea was only a shadow, insubstantial and quite unreal, more imagined than seen.

Furtive attempts at concealment seemed not only unnecessary but dangerous. Unhurriedly both men rose to their feet and inspected the lifeboats in the light of the torch. Number two, Siran's boat, had been holed in several places, but all above the water-line, and she appeared to be making little or no water: several of her airtight tanks had been punctured, but sufficient were undamaged to provide a still reasonable margin of safety.

It was a different story altogether with number one, the motor lifeboat. If anything, even fewer random shots had pierced her hull, but she was already settled deeply, heavily in the shallow water, her floorboards covered. The water inside the boat was stained and streaked with red blood from the shockingly mutilated Japanese sailor who lay draped over the gunwale, and it was below this barely recognisable remains of a human being that Nicolson found the cause of the trouble. The same grenade that had blown off a hand and most of a face had also blown a hole clear through the bottom of the boat, shattering the garboard strake for eighteen inches of its length and the adjacent planks right up to the bilge stringer on the starboard side. Nicolson straightened slowly and looked at McKinnon in the backwash of reflected light.

"Holed," he murmured briefly. "I could stick my head and shoulders through that gap in the bottom. Take us days to patch the damn' thing."

But McKinnon wasn't listening. The beam of the torch had shifted and he was staring down into the boat. When he spoke, he sounded remote, indifferent.

"It doesn't matter anyway, sir. The engine's finished." He paused, then went on quietly: "The magneto, sir: the grenade must have gone off just beneath it."

"Oh, lord, no! The magneto? Perhaps the second engineer―――"

"No one could repair it, sir," McKinnon interrupted patiently. "There's damn all left to repair."

"I see." Nicolson nodded heavily and gazed down at the shattered magneto, his mind dull and heavy with all the appalling implications that smashed magneto carried with it. "There isn't very much left of it, is there?"

McKinnon shivered. "Somebody's walking over my grave," he complained. He shook his head slowly, stared down into the boat even after Nicolson had switched the light off, then touched Nicolson lightly on the arm. "You know something, sir? It's a long, long row to Darwin."

Gudrun was her name, she told him, Gudrun Jorgensen Drachmann, the Jorgensen being for her maternal grandfather. She was three parts Danish, twenty-three years old and had been born in Odense on Armistice Day, 1918. Apart from two short stays in Malaya, she had lived in Odense all her life until she had qualified as a nurse and come out to her father's plantations near Penang. That had been in August, 1939.

Nicolson, lying on his back against the bank of the hollow, elasped hands beneath bis head and staring up unseeingly at the dark canopy of clouds, waited for her to go on, waited till she would begin again and hoped she would begin again. What was that quotation that old Willoughby, a hopeless, inveterate bachelor if ever there had lived one, had thrown at him so often in the past? "ù Her voice was ever soft" ― that was it. King Lear. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low." Willoughby's stock excuse for avoiding the accursed snares ― his own words ― of holy matrimony: a female ― Willoughby could invest that word with a wealth of scorn ― with a voice ever soft, gentle and low ― he had never found one. But maybe if Willoughby had been sitting where he'd been in the twenty minutes that had elapsed since he'd reported back to Findhorn and then come to see how the young boy was, he might have changed his mind.

Two minutes passed, three and she had said no more. By and by Nicolson stirred and turned towards her.

"You're a long way from home, Miss Drachmann. Denmark ― you liked it?" It was just something to say, but the vehemence of her answer surprised him.

"I loved it." There was finality in her voice, the tone of someone speaking of something lost beyond recall. Damn the Japanese, damn that waiting submarine, Nicolson thought viciously. He changed the subject abruptly.

"And Malaya? Hardly the same high regard for that, eh?"

"Malaya?" The tone changed, was the vocal accompaniment of an indifferent shrug. "Penang was all right, I suppose. But not Singapore. I ― I hated Singapore." She was suddenly vehement, all indifference gone, and had no sooner shown the depths of her feelings than she had realised what she had done, for voice and subject changed again. She reached out and touched him on the arm. "I would love a cigarette too. Or does Mr. Nicolson disapprove."

"Mr. Nicolson is sadly lacking in old world courtesy, I'm afraid." He passed over a packet of cigarettes, struck a match and as she bent to dip her cigarette in the pool of flame he could smell the elusive sandalwood again and the faint fragrance of her hair before she straightened and withdrew into the darkness. He ground out his match into the soil and asked her gently: "Why do you hate Singapore?"

Almost half a minute passed before she replied. "Don't you think that that might be a very personal question?"

"Very possibly." He paused a moment, then went on quietly, "What does it matter now?"

She took his meaning at once. "You're right, of course.

Even if it's only idle curiosity on your part, what does it matter now? It's funny, but I don't mind telling you ― probably because I can be sure that you wouldn't waste false sympathy on anyone, and I couldn't stand that." She was silent for a few seconds, and the tip of her cigarette burnt brightly in the gloom. "It's true what I say. I do hate Singapore. I hate it because I have pride, personal pride, because I have self-pity and because I hate not to belong. You wouldn't know about any of these things, Mr. Nicolson."

"You know an awful lot about me," Nicolson murmured mildly. "Please go on."

"I think you know what I mean," she said slowly. "I am European, was born in Europe, brought up and educated in Europe, and thought of myself only as a Dane ― as did all the Danish people. I was welcome in any house in Odense. I have never been asked to any European's house in Singapore, Mr. Nicolson." She tried to keep her voice light. "A drug on the social market, you might say. I wasn't a nice person to be seen with. It's not funny when you hear someone say,' A touch of the tarbrush, old man." And say it without bothering to lower their voice, and then everybody looks at you and you never go back there again. I know my mother's mother was Malay, but she is a wonderful, kind old lady and――-"

"Easy, take it easy. I know it must have been rotten. And the British were the worst, weren't they?"

"Yes, yes they were." She was hesitant. "Why do you say that?"

"When it comes to empire-building and colonialism we are the world's best ― and the world's worst. Singapore is the happy hunting ground of the worst, and our worst is something to wonder at. God's chosen people and with a dual mission in life ― to pickle their livers in an impossibly short time and to see to it that those who are not of the chosen remain continually aware of the fact ― the sons of Ham to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the end of their days. Good Christians all, of course, and staunch pillars and atten-ders of the church ― if they can sober up in time on the Sunday morning. They're not all like that, not even in Singapore: but you just didn't have the luck to run into any of the others."

"I didn't expect to hear you say that." Her voice was slow, surprised.

"Why not? It's true."

"That's not what I mean. It's just that I didn't expect to hear you talking like ― oh, well, never mind." She laughed, self-consciously. "The colour of my skin is not all that important."

"That's right. Go on. Give the knife a good twist." Nicolson ground out his cigarette beneath his heel. His voice was deliberately rough, almost brutal. "It's damned important to you, but it shouldn't be. Singapore's not the world. We like you, and we don't give two hoots if you're heliotrope."

"Your young officer ― Mr. Vannier ― he gives two hoots," she murmured.

"Don't be silly ― and try to be fair. He saw that gash and he was shocked ― and ever since he's been ashamed of showing that shock. He's just very young, that's all. And the captain thinks you're the cat's pyjamas. 'Translucent amber,' that's what he says your skin's like." Nicolson tut-tutted softly. "Just an elderly Lothario."

"He is not. He's just very, very nice and I like him very much." She added, inconsequentially: "You make him feel old."

"Nuts!" Nicolson said rudely. "A bullet in the lungs would make anyone feel old." He shook his head. "Oh, lord, there I go again. Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to snap at you. Daggers away, shall we, Miss Drachmann?"

"Gudrun." The one word was both his answer and a request, and completely innocent of any hint of coquetry.

"Gudrun? I like it, and it suits you."

"But you don't ― what is the word ― reciprocate?" There was mischief now in the husky voice. "I have heard the captain call you 'Johnny.' Nice," she said consideringly. "In Denmark it is the kind of name we would give to a very little boy. But I think I might manage to become used to it."

"No doubt," Nicolson said uncomfortably. "But you"

"Oh, but of course!" She was laughing at him, he knew, and he felt still more uncomfortable. "'Johnny' in front of the members of your crew ― unthinkable! But then, of course, it would be Mr. Nicolson," she added demurely. "Or perhaps you think 'sir' would be better?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Nicolson began, then stopped short and found himself echoing the girl's barely audible laughter. "Call me anything you like. I'll probably deserve it."

He rose to his feet, crossed to the front of the hollow where the Muslim priest was keeping watch, spoke briefly to him then moved down the hill to where Van Effen was keeping watch over the one serviceable lifeboat. He sat there with him for a few minutes, wondering what point there was anyway in guarding the boat, then made his way back up to the hollow. Gudrun Drachmann was still awake, sitting close by the little boy. He sat down quietly beside her.

"There's no point in sitting up all night," he said gently. "Peter will be all right. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Tell me straight." Her voice was very low. "How much chance have we got?"

"None."

"Honest and blunt enough," she acknowledged. "How long?"

"Noon tomorrow ― and that's a very late estimate. The submarine will almost certainly send a landing party ashore first ― or try to. Then they'll call up help ― but probably the planes will be here at first light anyway."

"Perhaps the men from the submarine will be enough. Perhaps they won't require to call up help. How many――-"

"We'll cut them to ribbons," Nicolson said matter-of-factly. "They'll need help, all right. They'll get it. Then they'll get us. If they don't kill us all by bombing or shelling, they may take you and Lena and Miss Plenderleith prisoner. I hope not."

"I saw them at Kota Bharu." She shivered at the memory. "I hope not too. And little Peter?"

"I know. Peter. Just another casualty," Nicolson safd bitterly. "Who cares about a two-year-old kid?" He did, he knew; he was becoming more attached to the youngster than he would ever have admitted to anybody, and one day, had Caroline lived――-

"Is there nothing we can do?" The girl's voice cut through his wandering thoughts.

"I'm afraid not. Just wait, that's all."

"But ― but couldn't you go out to the submarine and ― and do something?"

"Yes, I know. Cutlasses in teeth, capture it and sail it home in triumph. You've been reading the wrong comic books, lady." Before she could speak, he stretched out and caught her arm. "Cheap and nasty. I'm sorry. But they'll be just begging for us to do something like that."

"Couldn't we sail the boat away without being heard or seen?"

"My dear girl, that was the first thing we thought of. Hopeless. We might get away, but not far. They or the planes would get us at dawn ― and then those who weren't killed would be drowned. Funny, Van Eifen was very keen on the idea too. It's a fast way of committing suicide," he ended abruptly.

She thought for a few more moments. "But you think it's possible to leave here without being heard?"

Nicolson smiled. "Persistent young so-and-so, aren't you? Yes, it's possible, especially if someone were creating some sort of diversion elsewhere on the island to distract their attention. Why?"

"The only way out is to make the submarine think we're gone. Couldn't two or three of you take the boat away ― maybe to one of these little islands we saw yesterday ― while the rest of us make some kind of diversion." She was speaking quickly, eagerly now. "When the submarine saw you were gone, it would go away and―――"

"And go straight to these little islands ― the obvious place to go ― see that there was only a few of us, kill us, sink the boat, come back here and finish the rest of you off."

"Oh!" Her voice was subdued. "I never thought of that."

"No, but brother Jap would. Look, Miss Drachmann―――"

"Gudrun. We've stopped fighting, remember?"

"Sorry. Gudrun. Will you stop trying to beat your head against a brick wall? You'll just give yourself a headache. We've thought of everything ourselves, and it's no good. And if you don't mind now I'll try to get some sleep. I have to relieve Van Effen in a little while."

He was just dropping off when her voice came again. "Johnny?"

"Oh lord," Nicolson moaned. "Not another flash of inspiration."

"Well, I've just been thinking again and――-"

"You're certainly a trier." Nicolson heaved a sigh of resignation and sat up. "What is it?"

"It wouldn't matter if we stayed here as long as the submarine went away, would it?"

"What are you getting at?"

"Answer me please, Johnny."

"It wouldn't matter, no. It would be a good thing ― and if we could hole up here, unsuspected, for a day or so they'd probably call off the search. From this area, at least. How do you propose to make them sail away, thinking we're gone? Going to go out there and hypnotise them?"

"That's not even a little bit funny," she said calmly. "If dawn came and they saw that our boat was gone ― the good one, I mean ― they'd think we were gone too, wouldn't they."

"Sure they would. Any normal person would."

"No chance of them being suspicious and searching the island?"

"What the devil are you getting at?"

"Please, Johnny."

"All right," he growled. "Sorry again and again and again. No, I don't think they'd bother to search. What are you after, Gudrun?"

"Make them think we've gone," she said impatiently. "Hide the boat."

"'Hide the boat,' she says! There's not a place on the shores of this island where we could put it that the Japs wouldn't find in half-an-hour. And we can't hide it on the island ― it's too heavy to drag up and we'd make such a racket trying that they'd shoot the lot of us, even in the darkness, before we'd moved ten feet. And even if we could, there isn't a big enough clump of bushes on this blasted rock to hide a decent-sized dinghy, far less a twenty-four foot lifeboat. Sorry and all that, but it's no go. There's nowhere you could hide it, either on sea or land, that the Japs couldn't find it with their eyes shut."

"These were your suggestions, not mine," she said tranquilly. "Impossible to hide it on or around the island, and I agree. My suggestion is that you should hide it under the water."

"What!" Nicolson half sat up, stared at her in the darkness.

"Make some sort of diversion at one end of the island," she said quickly. "Sail the boat round the other end to that little bay in the north, fill it with stones, pull out the plug or whatever you call it, sink it in pretty deep water and then after the Japs have gone――-"

"Of course!" Nicolson's voice was a slow, considering whisper. "Of course it would work! My God, Gudrun, you've got it, you've got it!" His voice almost a shout now, he sat up with a jerk, caught the protesting, laughing girl in a bear hug of sheer joy and splendidly renewed hope, scrambled to his feet and ran across to the other side of the hollow. "Captain! Fourth! Bo'sun! Wake up, wake up all of you!"

Luck was with them at last, and it went off without a hitch. There had been some argument about the nature of the diversion ― some held that the captain of the submarine, or the man who had taken over since the captain's death, would be suspicious of a straightforward diversion, but Nicolson insisted that any man stupid enough to send a landing party straight ashore to where the boats had been instead of making a flank attack, was unlikely to be acute enough not to fall for the deception, and his insistence carried the day. Moreover, the wind, which had backed to the north, lent strength to his arguments, and the events proved him right.

Vannier acted as decoy and carried out his part intelligently and with perfect timing. For about ten minutes he moved-^ around the shore of the south-west tip of the island, flashing his hooded torch furtively and at infrequent intervals. He had Nicolson's night glasses with him, and as soon as he saw the dark shadow of the submarine begin to creep silently forward on her batteries he laid aside the torch altogether and took shelter behind a boulder. Two minutes later, with the submarine directly abreast of him and not more than a hundred yards off-shore, he stood up, twisted off the release fork of one of number two lifeboat's smoke floats and hurled it as far out to sea as he could: within thirty seconds the light northerly breeze had carried the dense orange smoke out to the submarine, smoke that swirled chokingly round the men in the conning-tower and made them blind.

Four to five minutes is the normal burning time for a smoke-float, but it was more tban enough. Four men and muffled oars had number two lifeboat well round to the northern side of the island a full minute before the canister hissed softly to extinction. The submarine remained where it was, motionless. Nicolson eased the lifeboat quietly alongside a steep shelf in the deep bight to the north, and found Farnholme, Ahmed the priest, Willoughby and Gordon waiting for them, a huge pile of smooth round stones lying ready at their feet.

Willoughby had insisted on removing the aircases ― the idea of driving holes into them had wounded his engineer's soul. It would take time with the limited tools at their disposal, require light for working by, would inevitably cause too much noise ― and the submarine commander might at any moment take it into his head to make a quick cruise round the island, lighting his way with flares. But the risk had to be taken.

Quickly the plugs were pulled out of the garboard strake, the men working at breakneck speed, and in almost complete silence, loading the bottom-boards with the stones passed down from tile shelf, carefully avoiding blocking the gushing plug holes. After two minutes Nicolson spoke softly to Farnholme, and the Brigadier went running off up the hill: only seconds later he was firing spaced shots in the direction of the submarine, the flat, explosive crack of the carbine roughly synchronising with and covering the metallic rings from the north side of the island as Nicolson and the others removed the shuttering of the buoyancy tanks and withdrew the yellow metal aircases, but leaving enough of the tanks in place to give the boat a strong positive buoyancy.

More stones into the boat, more water through the plug holes, and the level inside and out was just the same, lipping the lowest part of the gunwale, and then a few last stones and she was gone, slipping gently below the surface of the sea, steadied by fore and aft painters, settling in fifteen feet of water, on an even keel and a fine, shingly bottom. As they returned to the hollow on the bill, they saw a rocket parachute flare soaring up from the eastern tip of the island, curving away to the north-east. Vannier had timed it well, and if the submarine investigated there it would find it as quiet and empty of life as was now the other end. It would also have the effect of confusing them utterly, filling their minds with half a dozen conflicting suspicions, and, when morning came, would lend colour to the obvious conclusion that the survivors on the island had outwitted them and made off during the night.

And that was the conclusion to which they unmistakably came in the morning ― a grey, overcast dawn with a strengthening wind and no sign of the sun. As soon as it was light, the carefully hidden watchers on the island, securely screened behind thick bushes, could see the figures manning the con-ning-tower raising binoculars to their eyes ― the submarine had moved much farther out during the night ― and gesticulating at each other. Shortly afterwards the sound of the diesel motors could be heard, and the submarine moved off, circling quickly round the island. Abreast the remaining lifeboat once more it came to a stop and the A.A. gun lined up on the boat and started firing ― artificers must have repaired the damaged firing mechanism during the night. Only six shots in all were fired, but they were enough to reduce the boat to a holed and splintered wreck, and immediately after the last shell had exploded in the shallows the heavy diesels throbbed again and the submarine moved off due west, travelling at high speed, and investigated the two little islands there. Half an hour later it was lost to sight over the southern horizon.