South by Java Head

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The jungle, dank, dripping and steaming hot, was all around them. High above, through tiny gaps in the interwoven branches of heavily lianad trees, they could catch glimpses of the grey sullen sky, the same sky that had completely obscured the sunrise, just over two hours previously. The light that filtered down from these tree-tops had a strangely unreal quality, sinister and foreboding, but a quality that accorded well with the claustrophobic green walls of the jungle and the scummed, dismal swamps that bounded both sides of the jungle path.

Even as a jungle path it was almost a failure. As far as the jungle was concerned, it offered a fairly free passage, and axes or machetes had evidently been busy, fairly recently, on either side. But as a path it was treacherous to a degree, one moment hard-packed and worn smooth by constant use, the next vanishing abruptly and mysteriously as it rounded a giant tree-trunk and dipped into the waiting swamps ahead then reappearing a few yards ahead, smooth and firm again.

Nicolson and Vannier, already covered to the waists in the rotting, evil-smelling slime, were beginning to discover the techniques for dealing with these sudden breaches in the path. Invariably, they were beginning to find, there was an alternative route round these swamp patches and if they cast around long enough they usually found it. But it took too long to seek out these bypasses and, more than once, they had wandered so far from the track that they had regained it only by chance, so that now, unless the bypass was almost immediately obvious, they plunged through the swamps and regained firm land on the other side, pausing every time to wipe off as much of the slime as possible and the ugly grey leeches that fastened. to their legs. Then they would hurry on again, following the tortuous path round the massive trees as best they could in the 'weird, dim half-light of the tropical forest, trying their best to ignore the strange stirrings and rustlings that paralleled their progress on either side.

Nicolson was a seaman, first, last and all the time. He was little at home on land, still less so in the jungle, and this was not a journey that he would ever have made, would ever have contemplated making, had there been any option. But there had been no option, none whatsoever, a fact that had become cruelly evident soon after the first grey stirrings of dawn had let him look around to assess their position and the condition of the boat's company. Both had been very far from reassuring.

They had landed somewhere on the Java shore of the Sunda Straits, in a deep bay, two miles wide across the horns, with a narrow shingled beach and a jungle that crowded down almost to the water's edge, a dense, impenetrable looking jungle that ran back into the high rain-forests that covered the slopes of the low hills to the south. The shores of the bay itself were completely empty of any life, animal or human, or any signs of life: there was only their own little company, huddled for what pitiful shelter they could under a cluster of palms, and, about a hundred yards along the beach, the upturned lifeboat.

The lifeboat was in bad shape. A great hole, almost fifteen feet in length, had been ripped out between the keel and the bilge grab-rail, and the keel itself had been broken and wrenched away from its hog piece. The lifeboat was beyond repair, a total loss. There was only the jungle left for them, and they were in no condition to face that.

Captain Findhorn, for all his courage, was still a very sick man, unable to walk a dozen steps. Van Effen was weak too, and in considerable pain, violently sick at regular intervals: before Nicolson and McKinnon had succeeded in freeing his badly mangled leg from the clam that had seized it while he had been bringing the child ashore, he had almost drowned in the shallow water, and this, coupled with the shrapnel wound in the thigh received some days previously and the crack on the skull lately given him by Farnholme had dangerously lowered his resistance and powers of recuperation. Both Walters and Evans had swollen arms from infected wounds, and they, too, suffered constantly, while McKinnon, though in no great pain, limped on a badly stiffened leg. Willoughby was weak, Gordon shiftless and worse than useless and Siran and his men obviously intended to be of help to no one but themselves.

That left only Nicolson and the fourth officer, and Nicolson knew that there was nothing they could do for the others, not directly. To try to repair the lifeboat was out of the question, and to think of building any kind of boat or raft with the few tools they had left was just ridiculous. On land they were, and on land they would have to remain. But they couldn't remain on that beach indefinitely. If they did, they would starve. Nicolson had no illusions about their ability to survive for any time at all on the food they could scrape from trees, bushes, on and under the ground. An experienced jungle man might get enough for survival, but the chances were that they would poison themselves in the very first meal they took. Even if they didn't, bark and berries wouldn't keep seriously ill men alive for long, and without medicines and fresh bandages for infected and suppurating wounds, the outlook was bleak indeed.

Food, shelter, bandages and medicine ― these were the essentials and wouldn't just come to them. They would have to go to look for them, to seek for help. How far distant help might be, and in what direction it would lie, was anybody's guess. The north-west corner of Java, Nicolson knew, had a fair population, and there were, he remembered, one or two largish towns some way inland. Too far inland ― their best chances lay with the coastal fishing villages. They might encounter hostility instead of help, they might possibly encounter Japanese ― in a mountainous land of forest and jungle like Java, they would almost certainly confine their activities to the coastal areas. But these possibilities, Nicolson realised, weren't even worth considering: they had to do this, and the incidental risks, no matter how severe, had to be ignored. Less than an hour after dawn he had taken a Colt.455 ― the only other salvaged weapon, the brigadier's machine-carbine he had left with McKinnon ― and moved off into the jungle, Vannier close behind him.

Less than twenty yards inland, just before they had reached the belt of forest, they had struck. a well-defined path, running north-east and south-west between the woods and the sea. Automatically, without even looking at one another, they had turned south-west: it wasn't until they had gone some distance that Nicolson realised why they had done it: in the long run, the south represented ultimate escape and freedom. Less than half a mile from where they had left the others, the beach to their left curved away to the west and north-west, following the lower horn of the bay: but the path had carried straight on across the base of the promontory, leaving the scrub and bushes and penetrating deep into the rain-forest itself.

Ninety minutes and three miles after leaving the beach Nicolson called a halt. They had just struggled through a thirty-yard patch of watery swamp that had taken them almost up to the armpits, and both men were exhausted. The effort, the sheer labour involved in their grotesquely slow-motion wading through these swamps was energy-sapping enough for men who had had little to drink and almost nothing to eat for a. week: but even worse was the steaming jungle, the oppressive' heat, the enervating humidity that stung and blinded their eyes with sweat.

Safe on a patch of firm ground, Nicolson sat and leaned his back against a thick tree-trunk. He wiped some mud off his forehead with the back of his left hand ― the right still clutched the gun ― and looked at Vannier, who had slid down almost full length on the ground, a forearm across his eyes, his chest rising and falling, deeply, quickly.

"Enjoying yourself, Fourth? I bet you never thought your Second Mate's ticket was a licence for traipsing through the Indonesian jungles?" Unconsciously, almost, he kept his voice down to a gentle murmur: the jungle, and everything about it, breathed hostility.

"Bloody awful, isn't it, sir?" Vannier stirred, groaned softly as some aching muscle rebelled, then tried to smile. "These tree-swinging Tarzans you see in films give you a quite erroneous idea of how progress is made through the jungle. Me, I think this damn' path here just goes on for ever and ever. You don't think we're travelling in circles, do you, sir?"

"Possible enough," Nicolson admitted. "Haven't seen the sun all day, and it's so blasted thick overhead that you can't even see lightness in the sky. We could be going north, south, or west, but I don't think so. I think this path will come out again to the sea."

"I hope you're right." Vannier was gloomy, but not depressed. Looking at the thin, sun-darkened face, with the now too-prominent cheekbones and the blistered, resolute mouth, Nicolson thought that, in the past few days, the furnace of privation and experience had cast Vannier in a completely different mould, changing him from an irresolute, uncertain boy to a toughened, determined man, a man aware of newfound resources and unsuspected capacities, a man well worth having by his side.

A minute, perhaps two, passed in silence, a silence marred only by the diminishing sound of their breathing and the sodden dripping of water in the leaves of the trees. Then, abruptly, Nicolson stiffened, his left hand reaching out to touch Vannier warningly on the shoulder. But the warning was unheeded. Vannier, too, had heard it, was drawing his legs under him and rising steadily, noiselessly to his feet. Seconds later both men were standing behind the trunk of the tree, waiting.

The murmur of voices and the soft pad of footsteps on the matted jungle floor came steadily nearer, the owners of the voices still hidden by the curve in the trail, less than ten yards away. They would have to wait till the last moment before identifying the approaching men, but it couldn't be helped. Nicolson looked swiftly round for a better place of hiding but there was none. The tree-trunk would have to do, and behind the tree-trunk they would wait. The approaching men ù ― it sounded as if there were only two of them ― might be Japanese. Even muffled by his shirt-front, the click of the Colt's safety-catch sliding off sounded unnaturally loud: a month ago he would have shrank from the thought of shooting unsuspecting men from ambush; a month ago…

Suddenly the approaching men had rounded the bend in the trail and were in full view. Three men, not two, and certainly not Japanese, Nicolson realised with quick relief. Relief and a vague surprise: subconsciously he had expected, if not Japanese, Sumatran natives dressed in the scanty minimum the climate demanded and carrying spears or blow-pipes: two of the newcomers were dressed in denims and faded blue shirts. Even more upsetting to preconceived notions was the rifle the eldest of the three carried. But it didn't upset the steadiness of the Colt in his hand. Nicolson waited until they were only ten feet away then stepped out into the middle of the path, the pistol barrel lined up motionless on the chest of the man with the rifle.

The man with the rifle was quick. A break in mid-stride, a flicker of the seamed brown eyes under the straw hat and the long snout of the rifle was swinging up as the left hand reached down for the barrel. But the young man by his side was even quicker. His sinewy hand darted out and clamped down on the barrel of the other's rifle, checking its upward sweep, and he answered the surprise and anger in the other's face with quick, sharp words. The elder man nodded heavily, looked away and let the gun droop till its muzzle almost touched the ground. Then he muttered something to the young man, who nodded and looked at Nicolson, eyes hostile in a calm, smooth face.

"Begrijp U Nederlands?"

"Dutch? Sorry, I don't understand," Nicholson lifted his shoulders in incomprehension, then looked briefly at Vannier. "Take his gun, Fourth. From the side."

"English? You speak English?" The young man's tongue was slow and halting. He was peering at Nicholson with eyes suspicious but no longer hostile, then his glance lifted an inch or two above Nicolson's eyes and he suddenly smiled. He turned and spoke rapidly to the man by his side, then looked at Nicolson. "I tell my father you are English. I know your hat. Of course you are English."

"This?" Nicolson touched the badge on his uniform cap.

"Yes. I live in Singapore" ― he waved his hand vaguely towards the north ― "for almost two years. Often I see English officers from ships. Why are you here?"

"We need help," Nicolson said bluntly. His first instinct had been to temporise, make sure of his ground, but something about the quiet dark eyes of the young' man changed his mind: not he realised wryly, that he was in any position to temporise anyway. "Our ship has been sunk. We have many sick, many hurt. We need shelter, food, medicines."

"Give us back the gun," the young man said abruptly.

Nicolson didn't hesitate. "Give them back the gun, Fourth."

"The gun?" Vannier was apprehensive, and looked it. "But how do you know――-"

"I don't. Give them the gun." Nicolson thrust the Colt into his belt.

Reluctantly, Vannier handed the rifle back to the man in the straw hat. The man snatched it, folded his arms over his gun and stared off into the forest. The young man looked at him in exasperation, then smiled apologetically to Nicolson.

"You must excuse my father," he said haltingly, "You have hurt his feelings. Men do not take guns from him."

"Why?"

"Because Trikah is Trikah, and nobody dare." The young man's voice held a blend of affection and pride and amusement. "He is the headman of our village."

"He is your chief?" Nicolson looked at Trikah with new interest. On this man, on his capacity to make decisions, to lend or refuse aid, all their lives might depend. Now that he looked closely, Nicolson could see in the lined brown face, grave and unsmiling, the authority, the repose one would associate with the ruler of a tribe or village. Trikah, in appearance, was very like his son and the boy who stood some distance behind them ― a younger son, Nicolson guessed. All three shared the low, wide forehead, intelligent eyes, finely chiselled lips and thin, almost aquiline nose: they had no negroid characteristics whatsoever, were almost certainly of unmixed Arabian descent. A good man to help you, Nicolson thought ― if he would help you.

"He is our chief," the young man nodded. "I am Telak, his eldest son."

"My name is Nicolson. Tell your father I have many sick English men and women on the beach, three miles to the north. We must have help. Ask him if he will help us."

Telak turned to his father, spoke rapidly in a harsh staccato tongue for a minute, listened to his father, then spoke again. "How many are sick?"

"Five men ― at least five men. There are also three women ― I do not think they could walk far. How many miles is it to your village?"

"Miles?" Telak smiled. "A man can walk there in ten minutes." He spoke again to his father, who nodded several times as he listened, then turned and spoke briefly to the young boy by his side. The boy listened intently, appeared to repeat instructions, flashed his white teeth in a smile at Nicolson and Vannier, turned quickly and ran off in the direction he had come.

"We will help you," Telak said. "My young brother has gone to the village ― he will bring strong men and litters for the sick. Come, let us go to your friends."

He turned, led the way into an apparently impenetrable patch of forest and undergrowth, skirted the swamp through which Nicolson and Vannier had so lately waded, and led them back on to the path again, all inside a minute. Vannier caught Nicolson's eye and grinned.

"Makes you feel stupid, doesn't it? Easy enough when you know how."

"What does your friend say?" Telak asked.

"Just that he wishes we had had you with us earlier on," Nicolson explained. "We spent most of our time wading up to the waists in swamps."

Trikah grunted an inquiry, listend to Telak, then muttered to himself. Telak grinned.

"My father says only fools and very little children get their feet wet in the forest. He forgets that one must be used to it." He grinned again. "He forgets the time ― the only time ― he was ever in a car. When it moved off he jumped over the side and hurt his leg badly."

Telak talked freely as they walked along through the filtered green light of the jungle. He made it quite obvious that he and his father were in no way pro-British. Nor were they pro-Dutch nor pro-Japanese. They were just pro-Indonesian, he explained, and wanted their country for themselves. But, once the war was over, if they had to negotiate with anyone for the freedom of their country, they would rather do it with the British or the Dutch. The Japanese made great protestations of friendship, but once the Japanese moved in on a country, they never moved out again. They asked for what they called co-operation, Telak said, and already they were showing that if they didn't get it one way, willingly, they would get it another ― with the bayonet and the tommy-gun.

Nicolson looked at him in quick surprise and sudden dismay.

"There are Japanese near here? They have landed, then?"

"Already they are here," Telak said gravely. He gestured to the east. "The British and Americans still fight, but they cannot last long. Already the Japanese have taken over a dozen towns and villages within a hundred miles of here. They have ― what do you call it ― a garrison, they have a garrison at Bantuk. A big garrison, with a colonel in charge. Colonel Kiseki." Telak shook his head like a man shivering with cold. "Colonel Kiseki is not human. He is an animal, a jungle animal. But the jungle animals kill only when they have to. Kiseki would tear the arm off a man ― or a little child ― as a thoughtless child would pull the wings off a fly."

"How far away from your village is this town?" Nicolson asked slowly.

"Bantuk?"

"Where the garrison is. Yes."

"Four miles. No more."

"Four miles! You would shelter us ― you would shelter so many within four miles of the Japanese! But what will happen

"I am afraid that you cannot stay long with us," Telak interrupted gravely. "My father, Trikah, says it will not be safe. It will not be safe for you or for us. There are spies, there are those who carry information for reward, even among our own people. The Japanese would capture you and take my father, my mother, my brothers and myself to Bantuk."

"As hostages?"

"That is what they would call it." Telak smiled sadly. "The hostages of the Japanese never return to their villages. They are a cruel people. That is why we help you."

"How long can we stay?"

Telak consulted briefly with his father, then turned to Nicolson. "As long as it is safe. We will feed you, give you a hut for sleeping and the old women of our village can heal any wounds. Perhaps you can stay three days, but no more."

"And then?"

Telak shrugged his shoulders and led the way through the jungle in silence.

They were met by McKinnon less than a hundred yards from where the boat had beached the previous night. He was running, staggering from side to side, and not because of his stiffened leg: blood was trickling down into his eyes from a bruised cut in the middle of his forehead, and Nicolson knew without being told who must have been responsible.

Furious, mortified and blaming only himself, McKinnon was very bitter, but no fault could really be attached to him. The first he had known of the heavy hurtling stone that had knocked him unconscious was when he had recovered his senses and found it lying by his side, and no man can watch three others, indefinitely and simultaneously. The others had been powerless, for the concerted attack had been carefully planned and the only carbine in the company snatched by Siran from McKinnon even as he fell. Siran and his men, Findhorn said, had made off towards the north-east.

McKinnon was all for pursuing the men, and Nicolson, who knew that Siran, alive and free, was a potential danger no matter where he was, agreed. But Telak vetoed the idea. Impossible to find them in the jungle in the first place, he said: and searching for a man with a machine-gun who could pick his place of ambush and then lie still was a very quick way of committing suicide. Nicolson acknowledged the verdict of an expert and led them down to the beach.

Just over two hours later the last of the litter-bearers entered Trikah's kampong ― the village clearing in the jungle. Small thin men but amazingly tough and enduring, most of the bearers had made the journey without being relieved of their loads or once stopping.

Trikah, the chief was as good as his promise. Old women washed and cleaned suppurating wounds, covered them with cool, soothing pastes, covered these in turn with large leaves and bound the whole with strips of cotton. After that, all were fed, and fed magnificently. More correctly, they were given a splendid selection of food to eat ― chicken, turtle eggs, warmed rice, durians, crushed prawns, yams, sweet boiled roots and dried fish: but hunger had long since died, they had lived too long with starvation to do anything but token justice to the spread before them. Besides, the paramount need was not for food, but for sleep, and sleep they soon had. No beds, no hammocks, no couch of twigs or grass: just cocoa-nut matting on the swept earthen floor of a hut, and that was enough, more than enough, it was paradise for those who had been without a night's sleep for longer than their weary minds could remember. They slept like the dead, lost beyond call in the bottomless pit of exhaustion.

When Nicolson awoke, the sun had long gone and night had fallen over the jungle. A still, hushed night, and a still, hushed jungle. No chatter of monkeys, no cries of night birds, no sounds of any life at all. Just the hush and the stillness and the dark. Inside the hut it was hushed, too, and still, but not dark: two smoking oil lamps hung from poles near the entrance.

Nicolson had been deep sunk in drugged, uncaring sleep. He might have slept for hours longer, and would have, given the opportunity. But he did not awake naturally. He awoke because of a sharp stab of pain that reached down even through the mists of sleep, a strange unknown pain that pierced his skin, cold and sharp and heavy. He awoke with a Japanese bayonet at his throat.

The bayonet was long and sharp and ugly, its oiled surface gleaming evilly in the flickering light. Down its length ran the notched runnel for blood. At a distance of a few inches, it looked like a huge metallic ditch, and into Nicolson's uncomprehending, half-waking mind flickered evil visions of slaughter and mass burials. And then the film was. away from his eyes, and his gaze travelled with sick fascination up the shining length of the bayonet, up to the barrel of the rifle and the bronzed brown hand that held it half-way down, beyond the bolt and magazine to the wooden stock and the other bronzed hand, beyond that again to the belted grey-green uniform and the face beneath the visored cap, a face with the lips drawn far back in a smile that was no smile at all, but an animal snarl of hate and expectancy, a sneering malignancy well matched by the blood lust in the porcine little eyes. Even as Nicolson watched, the lips drew still further back over the long, canine teeth, and the man leaned again on the stock of his rifle. The point of the bayonet went right through the skin at the base of the throat. Nicolson felt the waves of nausea flood over him, almost like the waves of the sea. The lights in the hut seemed to flicker and grow dim.

Seconds passed and his vision gradually returned. The man above him ― an officer, Nicolson could see now, he had a sword by his side ― had not moved, the bayonet still rested on his throat. Slowly, painfully, as best he could without moving head or neck even a millimetre, Nicolson let his eyes wander slowly round the hut, and the sickness came back to him again. Not from the bayonet, this time, but from the bitterness, the hopelessness that welled up in his throat in an almost physical tide of despair. His guard was not the only one in the hut. There must have been at least a dozen of them, all armed with rifles and bayonets, all with rifles and bayonets pointing down at the sleeping men and women. There was something weird and ominous about their silence and stealth and unmov-ing concentration. Nicolson wondered dimly whether they were all to be murdered in their sleep, and had no sooner done so when the man above him shattered the idea and the brooding silence.

"Is this the swine you spoke of? "He spoke in English, with the precise, grammatical fluency of an educated man who has not learned the language among the people who spoke it. "Is this their leader?"

"That is the man Nicolson." It was Telak who spoke, shadowed just beyond the doorway. He sounded remote, indifferent. "He is in charge of the party."

"Is that the case? Speak up, you English pig!" The officer emphasised his request with another jab at Nicolson's throat. Nicolson could feel the blood trickling slowly, warmly, on to the collar of his shirt. For a moment he thought to deny it, to tell the man that Captain Findhorn was his commanding officer, but instinct immediately told him that things would go very hard with the man whom the Japanese recognised as the leader. Captain Findhorn was in no condition to take any further punishment. Even a blow, now, could easily be enough to kill him.

"Yes, I am in charge." Even to himself, his voice sounded weak and husky. He looked at the bayonet, tried to gauge his chances of knocking it aside, recognised that it was hopeless. Even if he did, there were another dozen waiting men ready to shoot him down. "Take that damned thing away from my neck."

"Ah, of course! How forgetful of me." The officer removed his bayonet, stepped back a pace and then kicked Nicolson viciously in the side, just above the kidney. "Captain Yamata, at your service," he murmured silkily. "An officer in His Imperial Majesty's Nipponese Army. Be careful how you speak to a Japanese officer in future. On your feet, you swine." He raised his voice to a shout. "All of you, on your feet!"

Slowly, shakily, grey-faced beneath his dark tan and almost retching with the agony in his side, Nicolson rose to his feet. All around the hut others, too, were shaking off the dark fog of sleep and pushing up dazedly off the floor, and those who were too slow, too sick or too badly hurt were jerked cruelly upright regardless of their moans and cries and hustled out towards the door. Gudrun Drachmann, Nicolson saw, was one of those who were roughly handled; she had bent over to roll a still sleeping Peter in a blanket and gather him in her arms, and the guard had jerked them both up with a violence that must nearly have dislocated the girl's arm: the sharp cry of pain was hardly uttered before she had bitten it off in tight-lipped silence. Even in his pain and despair Nicolson found himself looking at her, looking and wondering, wondering at her patience and courage and the selfless unceasing devotion with which she had looked after the child for so many long days and endless nights, and as he looked and wondered he was conscious of a sudden and almost overwhelming sense of pity, conscious that he would have done anything to save this girl from further harm and hurt degradation, a feeling, he had to confess to himself with slow surprise, that he could never remember having had for any other than Caroline. He had known this girl for only ten days, and he knew her better than he would have known most in a dozen lifetimes: the quality and the intensity of their experiences and suffering in the past ten days had had the peculiar power and effect of selecting, highlighting and magnifying with a 'brutal and revealing clarity faults and merits, vices and virtues that might otherwise have remained concealed or dormant for years. But adversity and privation had been a catalyst that had brought the best and the worst into unmistakable view and, like Lachie McKinnon, Gudrun Drachmann had emerged shining and untarnished out of the furnace of pain and suffering and the extremest hardships. For a moment and incredibly, Nicolson forgot where he was, forgot the bitter past and empty future and looked again at the girl and he knew for the first time that he was deceiving himself, and doing it deliberately. It wasn't pity, it wasn't just compassion he felt for this slow-smiling scarred girl with a skin like a rose at dusk and the blue eyes of northern seas: or if it had been, it would never be again. Never again. Nicolson shook his head slowly and smiled tc himself, then grunted with pain as Yamata drove the heel of his rifle between his shoulder blades and sent him staggering towards the door.

It was almost pitch dark outside, but light enough for Nicolson to see where the soldiers were taking them ― towards the brightly-lit elders' meeting-place, the big square council house where they had eaten earlier, on the other side of the kampong. It was also light enough for Nicolson to see something else ― the faint outline of Telak, motionless in the gloom. Ignoring the officer behind him, ignoring the certainty of another teeth-rattling blow, Nicolson stopped, less than a foot away from him. Telak might have been a man carved from stone. He made no movement, no gesture at all, just stood still in the darkness, like a man far lost in thought.

"How much did they pay you, Telak?" Nicolson's voice was hardly more than a whisper.

Seconds passed and Telak did not speak. Nicolson tensed himself for another blow on the back, but no blow came. Then Telak spoke, his words so faraway a murmur that Nicolson had to bend forward, involuntarily, to hear him.

"They paid me well, Mr. Nicolson." He took a pace forward and half-turned, so that his side and profile were suddenly caught in the light streaming from the door of the hut. His left cheek, neck, arm and upper chest were a ghastly mass of sword or bayonet cuts, it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended; the blood seemed to mask the whole side of his body and, even as Nicolson watched, he could see it drip soundlessly on to the hard-beaten earth of the kampong. "They paid me well," Telak repeated tonelessly. "My father is dead, Trikah is dead. Many of our men are dead. We were betrayed and they took us by surprise."

Nicolson stared at him without speaking, all thought temporarily blocked by the sight of Telak ― a Telak, he could see now, with another Japanese bayonet only inches from his back. Not one bayonet, but two: Telak would have fought well before they struck him down. And then thought did come, pity and shock that this should have happened, and so soon, to men who had so selflessly befriended them, then, swift on the heels of that thought, bitter regret for the words that he himself had just uttered, for the horribly unjust accusation that must have been the last few grains of salt in the wounds of Telak's sorrow and suffering. Nicolson opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only a gasp of pain as a rifle butt again thudded into his back, a gasp synchronised with Yamata's low, evil laugh in the darkness.

Rifle now reversed, the Japanese officer drove Nicolson across the kampong at the jabbing point of his bayonet. Ahead of him, Nicolson could see the others being herded through the sharply-limned rectangle of light that was the entrance to the council house. Some were already inside. Miss Plenderleith was just passing through, with Lena at her back, then Gudrun with Peter, followed closely by the bo'sun and Van Effen. Then Gudrun, approaching the door, stumbled over something on the ground, overbalanced with the weight of the little boy in her arms, and almost fell. Her guard caught her savagely by the shoulder and pushed. Perhaps he meant to push her through the door, but if he did his direction was bad, for girl and child together crashed heavily into the lintel of the doorway. Almost twenty feet away Nicolson could hear the thud of a head or heads against unyielding wood, the girl's exclamation of pain and young Peter's shrill, high-pitched cry of fear and hurt. McKinnon, only a few feet behind the girl shouted something unintelligible ― his native Gaelic, Nicolson guessed ― took two quick steps forward and leapt for the back of the guard who had pushed the girl: but the swinging rifle butt of the soldier behind was even faster and the bo'sun never saw it coming….

The council house, brightly lit now with half a dozen oil-lamps, was a large, lofty room, twenty feet in width by thirty in length, with the entrance door in the middle of one of the longer sides. To the right hand side of the door, taking up nearly all the width of the room, was the elder's platform, with another door behind it leading out to the kampong. All the rest of the big wooden house, facing the door and to the left of it, was completely bare, hard-packed earth and nothing else. On this bare earth the prisoners sat in a small, tight semicircle. All except McKinnon ― Nicolson could just see him from where he sat, the shoulders, the lifeless, outflung arms and the back of the dark, curly head cruelly illumined by the harsh bar of light streaming out from the doorway of the council house, the rest of his body shadowed in the darkness.

But Nicolson had only an occasional glance to spare for the bo'sun, none at all for the watchful guards who lounged behind them or with their backs to the doorway. He had eyes at the moment only for the platform, for the men on the platform, thoughts only for his own stupidity and folly and squeamish-ness, for the carelessness that had led them all, Gudrun and Peter and Findhorn and all the rest of them, to this dark end.

Captain Yamata was sitting on the platform, on a low bench, and next to him was Siran. A grinning, triumphant Siran who no longer bothered to conceal his emotions with an expressionless face, a Siran obviously on the best of terms with the broadly smiling Yamata, a Siran who from time to time removed a long black cheroot from his gleaming teeth and blew a contemptuous cloud of smoke in the direction of Nicolson. Nicolson stared back with bleak unwavering eyes, his face drained of all expression. There was murder in his heart.

It was all too painfully obvious what had happened. Siran had pretended to go north from the beach where they had land ― a subterfuge, Nicolson thought savagely, that any child should have expected. He must have gone some little way to the north, hidden, waited until the litter-bearers had moved off, followed them, bypassed the village, moved on to Bantuk and warned the garrison there. It had all been so inevitable, so clearly what Siran had been almost bound to do that any fool should have foreseen it and taken precautions against it. The precautions consisting of killing Siran. But he, Nicolson, had criminally failed to take these precautions. He knew now that if he ever again had the chance he would shoot Siran with as little emotion as he would a snake or an old tin can. He knew also that he would never have the chance again.

Slowly, with as much difficulty as if he were fighting against the power of magnetism, Nicolson dragged his gaze away from Siran's face and looked round the others sitting on the floor beside him. Gudrun, Peter, Miss Plenderleith, Findhorn, Willoughby, Vannier ― they were all there, all tired and sick and suffering, nearly all quiet and resigned and unafraid. His bitterness was almost intolerable. They had all trusted him, trusted him completely, implicitly depended upon him to do all in his power to bring them all safely home again. They had trusted him, and now no one of them would ever see home again… He looked away towards the platform. Captain Yamata was on his feet, one hand hooked in his belt, the other resting on the hilt of his sword.

"I shall not delay you long." His voice was calm and precise. "We leave for Bantuk in ten minutes. We leave to see my commanding officer, Colonel Kiseki, who is very anxious to see you all: Colonel Kiseki had a son who commanded the captured American torpedo boat sent to meet you." He was aware of the sudden quick looks between the prisoners, the sharp indrawing of breath and he smiled faintly. "Denial will serve you nothing. Captain Siran here will make an excellent witness. Colonel Kiseki is mad with grief. It would have been better for you ― for all of you, each last one of you ― had you never been born.

"Ten minutes," he went on smoothly. "Not more. There is something we must have first, it will not take long, and then we will go." He smiled again, looked slowly round the prisoners squatting on the floor beneath him. "And while we wait, I am sure you would all care to meet someone whom you think you know but do not know at all. Someone who is a very good friend of our glorious Empire, someone who, I feel sure, our glorious Emperor will wish to thank in person. Concealment is no longer necessary, sir."

There was a sudden movement among the prisoners, then one of them was on his feet, advancing towards the platform, speaking fluently in Japanese and shaking the bowing Captain Yamata by the hand. Nicolson struggled half-way to his feet, consternation and disbelief in every line of his face, then fell heavily to the ground as a rifle butt caught him across the shoulder. For a moment his neck and arm seemed as if they were on fire, but he barely noticed it.

"Van Effen! What the devil do you think――-"

"Not Van Effen, my dear Mr. Nicolson," Van Effen protested. "Not 'Van 'but 'von'. I'm sick and tired of masquerading as a damned Hollander." He smiled faintly and bowed. "I am at your service, Mr. Nicolson. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexis von Effen, German counter-espionage."

Nicolson stared at him, stared without speaking, nor was he alone in his shocked astonishment. Every eye in the council house was on Van Effen, eyes held there involuntarily while stunned minds fought to orientate themselves, to grasp the situation as it was, and memories and incidents of the past ten days slowly coalesced into comprehension and the tentative beginnings of understanding. The seconds dragged interminably by and formed themselves into a minute, and then almost another minute, and there were no more tentative wonderings and deepening suspicions. There was only certainty, stone cold certainty that Colonel Alexis von Effen was really who he claimed to be. There could be no doubt at all.

It was Van Effen who finally broke the silence. He turned his head slightly and looked out the door, then glanced again at his late comrades in distress. There was a smile on his face, but there was no triumph in it, no rejoicing, no signs of pleasure at all. If anything, the smile was sad.

"And here, gentlemen, comes the reason for all our trials and suffering of the past days, of why the Japanese ― my people's allies, I would remind you ― have pursued and harried us without ceasing. Many of you wondered why we were so important to the Japanese, our tiny group of survivors. Now you will know."

A Japanese soldier walked past the men and women on the floor and dumped a heavy bag between Van Effen and Yamata. They all stared at it, then stared at Miss Plenderleith. It was her bag, and her lips and knuckles were pale as ivory, her eyes half-shut as if in pain. But she made no move and said nothing at all.

At a sign from Van Effen the Japanese soldier took one handle of the bag, while Van Effen took the other. Between them they raised it to shoulder height, then inverted it. Nothing fell to the ground, but the heavily weighted lining dropped through the inverted mouth of the canvas and leather bag and hung down below it as it were filled with lead. Van Effen looked at the Japanese officer. "Captain Yamata?"

"My pleasure, Colonel." Yamata stepped forward, the sword hissing from its sheath. It gleamed once in the bright yellow light from the oil-lamps, then its razored edge sliced cleanly through the tough canvas lining as if it had been so much paper. And then the gleam of the sword was lost, buried, extinguished in the dazzling, scintillating stream of fire that poured from the bag and pooled on the earth beneath in a deep, lambent cone of coruscating brilliance.

"Miss Plenderleith has quite a taste in gee-gaws and trinkets." Van Effen smiled pleasantly and touched the sparkling radiance at his feet with a casual toe. "Diamonds, Mr. Nicolson. The largest collection, I believe, ever seen outside the Union of South Africa. These are valued at just under two million pounds."