South by Java Head

by Alistair MacLean

  “Women, children and sick men and they stick them aboard one of the Sulaimiya Company’s floating death-traps—and the whole archipelago swarming with Jap aircraft.” Findhorn swore, quietly, savagely. “I wonder what mutton-headed genius in Singapore thought that one up.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” McKinnon said woodenly.

  Findhorn looked at him sharply, then looked away again. “The question was purely rhetorical, McKinnon,” he said coldly. His voice dropped almost an octave and he went on quietly, musingly, speaking to no one in particular, a man thinking aloud and not liking his thoughts at all.

  “If we go north, the chances of our getting as far as Rhio and back again are less than remote: they do not exist. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. It may be a trap—it probably is: the Kerry Dancer left before us and she should have been through Rhio six hours ago. If it’s not a trap, the probability is that the Kerry Dancer is at this moment sinking, or has sunk. Even if she is still afloat, fire will have forced passengers and crew to abandon ship. If they’re just swimming around—most of them wounded men—there’ll be mighty few of them left in the six or seven hours it would take us to get there.”

  Findhorn paused for some moments, lit a cigarette in defiance of the company’s and his own regulations, and went on in the same flat monotone.

  “They may have taken to their boats, if they had any boats left after bombs, machine-guns and fire had all had a go at them. Within a few hours all the survivors can land on any one of a score of islands. What chance have we got of finding the right island in total darkness in the middle of a storm—assuming that we were crazy enough—suicidal enough—to move into the Rhio Straits and throw away all the sea-room we must have in the middle of a typhoon?” He grunted in irritation as spiralling smoke laced his tired eyes—Captain Findhorn hadn’t left the bridge all night—gazed down with mild surprise, as if seeing it for the first time, at the cigarette clipped between his fingers, dropped it and ground it out with the heel of his white canvas shoe. He stared down at the crushed stub for long seconds after it had gone out, then looked up, his gaze travelling slowly round the four men in the wheelhouse. The gaze meant nothing—Findhorn would never have included the quartermaster, bo’sun or the fourth officer in his counsels. “I can see no justification whatsoever for jeopardising the ship, the cargo and our lives on a wild goose chase.”

  No one said anything, no one moved. The silence was back again, heavy, foreboding, impenetrable. The air was still, and very airless—the approaching storm, perhaps. Nicolson was leaning against the flag locker, hooded eyes looking down at his hands clasped before him: the others were looking at the captain, and not blinking: the Viroma had now slewed yet further off course, ten, perhaps twelve degrees, and still swinging steadily.

  Captain Findhorn’s wandering gaze finally settled on Nicolson. The remoteness had gone from the captain’s eyes now, when he looked at his first mate.

  “Well, Mr. Nicolson?” he asked.

  “You’re perfectly right, sir, of course.” Nicolson looked up, gazed out the window at the foremast swaying slowly, gently, under the lift of the deepening swell. “A thousand to one that it’s a trap, or, if it isn’t, ship, crew and passengers will all be gone by now—one way or another.” He looked gravely at the quartermaster, at the compass, then back at Findhorn again. “But as I see we’re already ten degrees off course and still slewing to starboard, we might as well save trouble and just keep on going round to starboard. The course would be about 320, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Nicolson.” Findhorn let his breath escape in a long, almost inaudible sigh. He crossed over towards Nicolson, his cigarette case open. “For this once only, to hell with the rules. Mr. Vannier, you have the Kerry Dancer’s position. A course for the quarter master, if you please.”

  Slowly, steadily, the big tanker swung round, struck off to the north-west back in the direction of Singapore, into the heart of the gathering storm.

  A thousand to one were the odds that Nicolson would have offered and the captain would have backed him in that and gone even further—and they would both have been wrong. There was no trap, the Kerry Dancer was still afloat and she hadn’t been abandoned—not entirely.

  Still afloat, at 2 o’clock on that sultry, breathless mid-February afternoon in 1942, but not looking as if she would be afloat much longer. She was deep in the water, down by the head and listing over so heavily to starboard that the well-deck guardrail was dipping into the sea, now lost in it, now showing clear as the long, low swell surged up the sloping deck and receded, like waves breaking on a beach.

  The forward mast was gone, broken off about six feet above the deck; a dark, gaping hole, still smouldering, showed where the funnel had been, and the bridge was unrecognisable, a scrapyard shambles of buckled steel plates and fractured angle-irons, outlined in crazy, surrealist silhouette against a brazen sky. The fo’c’sle—the crew’s quarters just for'ard of the well-deck—looked as if it had been opened up by a gigantic can-opener, the scuttles on the ship’s side had disappeared completely and there was no trace of anchors, wind lass or for'ard derrick winch; all this fo’c’sle damage the result, obviously, of a bomb that had penetrated the thin steel deck plating and failed to explode until it was deep inside the ship. No one there at the time could have known anything about it, for the lethal blast would have been far faster than realisation. Abaft the well-deck, the wood-lined accommodation quarters on the main and upper decks had been completely burnt out, gutted as far as the after well, sky and sea clearly visible through the gaunt and twisted framework.

  It was impossible that human beings could have survived the bludgeoning, the consuming, metal-melting white heat that had reduced the Kerry Dancer to the charred, dead wreck drifting imperceptibly south-westwards towards the Abang Straits and faraway Sumatra. And, indeed, there was no life to be seen on what was left of the decks of the Kerry Dancer, no life to be seen anywhere, above or below. A deserted, silent skeleton, a dead hulk adrift on the China Sea. … But there were twenty-three people still alive in the after-castle of the Kerry Dancer.

  Twenty-three people, but some of them had not much longer to live. These were the wounded soldiers, the stretcher cases that had been close enough to death already before the ship had pulled out from Singapore, and the conclusive impact of the bombs and the gasping heat of the fires that had stopped short at the break of the after well-deck had destroyed what feeble resources and hold of life were left to most of them, and tipped the scales against recovery. There might have been hope for them, some slender hope, had they been brought out of that panting suffocation while there was yet time and lowered to the rafts and boats. But there had been no time. Within seconds of the first bomb falling, someone outside had sledgehammered tight the eight clips that secured the only door—the water-tight door—that gave access to the upper deck.

  Through this smoke-blackened door a man cried out from time to time, a cry not of pain but of anguished memory lacerating a darkening mind; there were whimpers, too, from other badly wounded men, again not moans of pain; the Eurasian nursing sister had with her all the drugs and sedatives she required, not pain but just the feeble, aimless murmur of dying men. Now and again a woman’s voice could be heard, soothing, consoling, the soft sound of it punctuated from time to time by the deep angry rumble of a man. But mostly it was just the husky undertones of sick men and, very occasionally, the quivering indrawn breaths, the lost and lonely wailing of a little child.

  Twilight, the brief tropical twilight, and the sea was milky white from horizon to horizon. Not close at hand—there it was green and white, great steep-sided walls of green, broken-topped and parallelstreaked with the wind-blown spume, waves that collapsed in a boiling, seething cauldron of rushing phosphorescence and foamed whitely across the low, wide decks of the Viroma, burying hatchcovers, pipe-lines and valves, burying, at times, even the catwalks, the gangways that stretched fore-and-aft eight feet above the deck. But further away fr
om the ship, as far as the eye could see in the darkening night, there was nothing but the eerie, glistening whiteness of wind-flattened wave-tops and driving spray.

  The Viroma, her big single screw thrusting under maximum power, lurched and staggered northwards through the storm. Northwest should have been her course, but the fifty-knot wind that had hit her on the starboard beam, almost without warning and with the typical typhoon impact of a tidal wave moving at express speed, had pushed her far off course to the south and west close in to Sebanga. She was far round into the sea now, corkscrewing violently and pitching steeply, monotonously, as the big, quartering seas bore down on her starboard bow and passed over and below her. She shuddered every time her bows crashed into a trough, then quivered and strained throughout every inch of her 460 foot length when the bows lifted and fought their way clear of the press of cascading white water. The Viroma was taking punishment, severe punishment—but that was what she had been built for.

  Up on the starboard wing of the bridge, muffled in oilskins, crouched down behind the negligible shelter of the canvas dodger, and with his eyes screwed almost shut against the lash of the driving rain, Captain Findhorn peered out into the gathering dusk. He didn’t look worried, his chubby face was as composed, as impassive as ever, but he was worried, badly, and not about the storm. The wild staggering of the Viroma, the explosive, shuddering impact of plummeting bows burying themselves to the hawse-pipes in a massive head sea, would have been a terrifying experience for any landsman: Captain Findhorn barely noticed it. A deep-laden tanker has a remarkably low centre of gravity with corresponding stability—which doesn’t make it roll any less but what matters is not the extent of the roll but whether or not a ship will recover from a roll, and a tanker always does: its system of water-tight cross bulkheads gives it enormous strength: and with the tiny access hatches securely battened down, the smooth, unbroken sweep of steel decks makes it the nearest thing afloat to a submarine. Where wind and weather are concerned, a tanker is virtually indestructible. Captain Findhorn knew that only too well, and he had sailed tankers through typhoons far worse than this, and not only across the rim, where he was now, but through the heart. Captain Findhorn was not worried about the Viroma.

  Nor was he worried about himself. Captain Findhorn had nothing left to worry about—literally: he had a great deal to look back upon, but nothing to look forward to. The senior captain of the British-Arabian Tanker Company, neither the sea nor his employers had anything more to offer him than two more years of command, retirement, and a sufficient pension. He had nowhere to go when he retired: his home for the past eight years, a modest bungalow off the Bukit Timor road, just outside the town of Singapore, had been destroyed by bombs in mid-January. His twin sons, who had always maintained that anyone who went to sea for a livelihood wanted his head examined, had joined the R.A.F. at the outbreak of war, and died in their Hurricanes, one over Flanders, one over the English Channel. His wife, Ellen, had survived the second son for only a few weeks. Cardiac failure, the doctor had said, which was a neat enough medical equivalent for a broken heart. Captain Findhorn had nothing to worry about, just nothing in the world—as far as he himself was concerned.

  But selfishness had no root, no hold in Captain Findhorn’s nature, and the emptiness of all that lay ahead had not robbed him of his concern for those for whom life still held much. He thought of the men under his command, men not like himself but men with parents and children, wives and sweethearts, and he wondered what moral justification, if any, he had had for risking the life of non-combatants in turning back towards the enemy. He wondered, too, about the oil beneath his feet again, about his justification, if any, for hazarding a priceless cargo so desperately needed by his country—the thought of the loss to his company he dismissed with the mental equivalent of an indifferent shrug. Lastly, and most deeply of all, he thought about his chief officer of the past three years, John Nicolson.

  He did not know and he did not understand John Nicolson. Some woman might, some day, but he doubted whether any man ever would. Nicolson was a man with two personalities, neither of them in any way directly connected with his professional duties, or the manner of the performance of them, which was exceptional: next in line for command in the Anglo-Arabian fleet, Nicolson was regarded by Captain Findhorn as the finest officer he had had serve under him in his thirty-three years as master: unvaryingly competent when competence was called for, brilliant when competence was not enough, John Nicolson never made a mistake. His efficiency was almost inhuman. Inhuman, Findhorn thought, that was it, that was the other side of his character. Nicolson normally was courteous, considerate, even humorously affable: and then some strange sea-change would come over him and he became aloof, remote, cold—and above all ruthless.

  There had to be a link, a meeting point between the two Nicolsons, something that triggered off the transition from one personality to another. What it was Captain Findhorn did not know. He did not even know the nature of the slender bond between Nicolson and himself, he was not close to Nicolson, but he believed he was closer than anyone he knew. It could have been the fact that they were both widowers, but it was not that. It should have been that, for the parallels were striking—both wives had lived in Singapore, Nicolson’s on her first and his on her second five-year tour of duty in the Far East: both had died within a week of each other, and within a hundred yards of each other. Mrs. Findhorn had died at home grieving: Caroline Nicolson had died in a high-speed car smash almost outside the white-painted gates of Captain Findhorn’s bungalow, victim of a drunken maniac who had escaped without as much as a single scratch.

  Captain Findhorn straightened up, tightened the towel round his neck, wiped some salt from his eyes and lips and glanced at Nicolson, farther out on the wing of the bridge. He was quite upright, seeking no shelter behind the venturi dodger, hands resting lightly on the side of the bridge, the intense blue eyes slowly quartering the duskblurred horizon, his face impassive, indifferent. Wind and rain, the crippling heat of the Persian Gulf or the bitter sleet storms of the Scheldt in January were all the same to John Nicolson. He was immune to them, he remained always indifferent, impassive. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  The wind was backing now, slowly, very slowly, and as steadily increasing in strength, the brief tropical twilight was almost over, but the seas were as milky-white as ever, stretching away into the gloom. Findhorn could see their gleaming phosphorescence off to port and starboard, curving in a great heaving horseshoe round the stern, but he could see nothing forward. The Viroma was now thrusting north dead in the eye of the gale-force wind, and the heavy driving rain, strangely cold after the heat of the day, was sweeping almost horizontally fore and aft across the decks and the bridge, numbing his face with a thousand little lances, filling his eyes with pain and tears. Even with eyes screwed tight to the narrowest slits, the rain still stung and blinded: they were blind men groping in a blind world and the end of the world was where they stood.

  Captain Findhorn shook his head impatiently, an impatience compounded equally of anxiety and exasperation, and called to Nicolson. There was no sign that he had been heard. Findhorn cupped his hands to his mouth and called again, realised that what little of his voice was not being swept away by the wind was being drowned by the crash of the plunging bows and the thin high whine in the halyards and rigging. He moved across to where Nicolson stood, tapped him on the shoulder, jerked his head towards the wheelhouse and made for there himself. Nicolson followed him. As soon as he was inside Findhorn waited for a convenient trough in the sea, eased forward the sliding door with the downward pitch of the ship, and secured it. The change from driving rain, wind and the roaring of the sea to dryness, warmth and an almost miraculous quiet was so abrupt, so complete, that it took mind and body seconds to accustom themselves to the change.

  Findhorn towelled his head dry, moved across to the port for-ard window and peered through the Clear View Screen—a circular, inset plate or glass b
and-driven at high speed by an electric motor. Under normal conditions of wind and rain centrifugal force is enough to keep the screen clear and provide reasonable visibility. There was nothing normal about the conditions that night and the worn driving belt, for which they had no spare, was slipping badly. Findhorn grunted in disgust and turned away.

  “Well, Mr. Nicolson, what do you make of it?”

  “The same as you, sir.” He wore no hat and the blond hair was plastered over head and forehead. “Can’t see a thing ahead.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “I know.” Nicolson smiled, braced himself against a sudden, vicious pitch, against the jarring shock that shook the windows of the wheelhouse. “This is the first time we’ve been safe in the past week.”

  Findhorn nodded. “You’re probably right. Not even a maniac would come out looking for us on a night like this. Valuable hours of safety, Johnny,” he murmured quietly, “and we would be better employed putting even more valuable miles between ourselves and brother Jap.”

  Nicolson looked at him, looked away again. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but Findhorn knew something at least of what he must be thinking, and swore quietly to himself. He was making it as easy as possible—Nicolson had only to agree with him.

  “The chances of there being any survivors around are remote,” Findhorn went on. “Look at the night. Our chances of picking anybody up are even more remote. Again, look at the night—and as you say yourself we can’t see a damn’ thing ahead. And the chances of piling ourselves up on a reef—or even a fair-sized island—are pretty high.” He looked out a side window at the driving fury of the rain and the low, scudding cloud. “We haven’t a hope of a star-sight while this lot lasts.”