“I tend to share your confidence in the guards.” Findhorn looked sideways at his chief officer, a quizzical expression on his face. “And how is our worthy Captain Siran looking this morning? A trifle worse of the wear, you would say?”
“Not he. Anyone can see that he’s slept the deep, untroubled sleep of a man with the conscience of a new-born child.” Nicolson stared out to sea for a few moments, then said quietly: “I’d appreciate the opportunity of giving the hangman any assistance he may require.”
“You’d probably be one of the last in a long queue,” Findhorn said grimly. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, Johnny, but I think the man’s an inhuman fiend and should be shot down the same way as you’d destroy a mad dog.”
“It’ll probably come to that one of these days.” Nicolson shook his head. “Mad or not, he’s queer enough.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s English, or three parts English, I’ll bet my last penny. He’s come up through one of the big public schools, and it’s an odds-on guess that he’s had a damn sight more education than I ever had. What’s a man like that doing in charge of a miniature hell-ship like the Kerry Dancer?”
Findhorn shrugged. “Lord knows. I could give you a dozen explanations, all different and with only one thing in common—they’d all be wrong. You’ll find half the dead-beats and black sheep of the world within a couple of hundred miles of Singapore—but he wouldn’t come in either category, so that still doesn’t answer your question. Frankly, I’m at a loss.” Findhorn drummed his fingers on the dodger rail. “He baffles me, but, by Harry, he’s not the only one!”
“Van Effen? Our worthy Brigadier?”
“Among others.” Findhorn shook his head. “Our passengers are a strange bunch, but not half as strange as the way they act. Take the Brigadier and this Muslim priest. They’re thick as thieves. Unusual, you might say?”
“Incredible. The doors of the Bengal and Singapore Clubs would be for ever shut against him. Not done, in capital letters.” Nicolson grinned. “Think of the shock and the fearful mortality rate if it were known—in the upper military circles, I mean: all the best bars in the East littered with apoplectic cases, sundowners still clutched in their stiffening hands. Brigadier Farnholme is carrying a fearful responsibility.”
Findhorn smiled faintly. “And you still think he’s not a phoney?”
“No, sir—neither do you. Colonel Blimp, Grade A—then he does or says something offbeat, completely out of character. He just doesn’t classify easily. Inconsiderate of him, very.”
“Very,” Findhorn murmured dryly. “Then there’s his other pal, Van Effen. Why the devil should Siran show such tender concern for his health?”
“It’s difficult,” Nicolson admitted. “Especially when Van Effen didn’t show much concern for his, what with threatening to blow holes in his spine and trying to throttle him. But I’m inclined to believe Van Effen. I like him.”
“I believe him, too. But Farnholme just doesn’t believe him—he knows Van Effen is telling the truth—and when I ask him why he backwaters at high speed and advances piffling reasons that wouldn’t convince a five year old.” Findhorn sighed wearily. “Just about as puerile and unconvincing as the reasons Miss Plenderleith gave me for wanting to see me when I went to her cabin just after you and Siran had finished your—ah—discussion.”
“So you went after all?” Nicolson smiled. “I’m sorry I missed that.”
“You knew?”
“Vannier told me. I practically had to drag him to the saloon to get him to give you her message. What did she say?”
“First of all she denied having sent for me at all, then gave me some nonsense about when would we arrive in port and could she send a cable to her sister in England, just something fabricated on the spur of the moment, obviously. She’s worried about something and I think she was going to tell me what it was, then changed her mind.” Captain Findhorn shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the problem. “Did you know that Miss Plenderleith came from Borneo too? She’s been headmistress in a girls’ school there and hung on to the last minute.”
“I know. We had a long conversation on the catwalk this morning. Called me ‘young man’ all the time and made me wonder whether I had washed behind the ears.” Nicolson looked speculatively at the captain. “Just to add to your worries, I’ll tell you something else you don’t know. Miss Plenderleith had a visitor, a gentleman friend, in her cabin last night.”
“What! Did she tell you this?”
“Good lord, no. Walters told me. He was just stretching out on his settee after coming off watch last night when he heard a knock on Miss Plenderleith’s door—pretty soft, but he heard it: his settee in the wireless office is right up against the bulkhead of his cabin. Walters says he was curious enough to listen at the communicating door, but it was shut tight and he couldn’t hear much, it was all very whispery and conspiratorial. But one of the voices was very deep, a man’s murmur for certain. He was there almost ten minutes, then he left.”
“Midnight assignations in Miss Plenderleith’s cabin!” Findhorn still hadn’t recovered from his astonishment. “I would have thought she would have screamed her head off.”
“Not her!” Nicolson grinned and shook his head positively. “She’s a pillar of respectability, all right, but any midnight visitor would have been hauled in, lectured over the old girl’s wagging forefinger and sent on his way a chastened man, bent on leading a better life. But this was no lecture, I gather, but a very hush-hush discussion.”
“Walters any idea who it was?”
“None at all—just that it was a man’s voice and that he himself was too damn tired and sleepy to worry about it anyway.”
“Yes. Maybe he has the right idea at that.” Findhorn took off his cap and mopped his dark head with a handkerchief: only eight o’clock, but already the sun was beginning to burn. “We’ve more to do than worry about them anyway. I just can’t figure them out. They’re a strange bunch—each one I talk to seems queerer than the last.”
“Including Miss Drachmann?” Nicolson suggested.
“Good heavens, no! I’d trade the bunch of them for that girl.” Findhorn replaced his cap and shook his head slowly, his eyes distant. “A shocking case, Johnny—what a ghastly mess those diabolical little butchers made of her face.” His eyes came into focus again, and he looked sharply at Nicolson. “How much of what you told her last night was true?”
“About what the surgeons could do for her, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Not much. I don’t know a great deal, but that scar will have stretched and set long before anyone can do anything about it. They can still do something, of course—but they’re not miracle workers: none of them claims to be.”
“Then damn it all, mister, you’d no right to give her the impression they are.” Findhorn was as near anger as his phlegmatic nature would allow. “My God, think of the disillusionment!”
“Eat, drink and be merry,” Nicolson quoted softly. “Do you think you’ll ever see England again, sir?”
Findhorn looked at him for a long moment, craggy brows drawn deep over his eyes, then nodded in slow understanding and turned away. “Funny how we keep thinking in terms of peace and normality,” he murmured. “Sorry, boy, sorry. Yet I’ve been thinking about nothing else since the sun came up. Young Peter, the nurses, everyone—mostly the child and that girl, I don’t know why.” He was silent for a few moments, eyes quartering the cloudless horizon, then added with only apparent inconsequence: “It’s a lovely day, Johnny.”
“It’s a lovely day to die,” Nicolson said sombrely. Then he caught the captain’s eye and smiled, briefly. “It’s a long time waiting, but the Japanese are polite little gentlemen—ask Miss Drachmann: they always have been polite little gentlemen: I don’t think they’ll keep us waiting much longer.”
But the Japanese did keep them waiting. They kept them waiting a long, long time. Not long, perhaps, as the world reckons s
econds and minutes and hours, but when men, despairing men too long on the rack of suspense, momentarily await and expect the inevitable, then the seconds and the minutes and the hours lose any significance as absolute units of time and, instead, become relative only to the razor-edged expectancy of the passing moment, to the ever-present anticipation of what must inexorably come. And so the seconds crawled by and became minutes, and the minutes stretched themselves out interminably and lengthened into an hour, and then another hour, and still the skies were empty and the line of the shimmering horizon remained smooth and still and unbroken. Why the enemy—and Findhorn knew hundreds of ships and planes must be scouring the seas for them—held off so long was quite beyond his understanding: he could only hazard the guess that they must have swept that area the previous afternoon after they had turned back to the aid of the Kerry Dancer and were now searching the seas farther to the south. Or perhaps they thought the Viroma had been lost in the typhoon—and even as that explanation crossed his mind Findhorn dismissed it as wishful thinking and knew that the Japanese would think nothing of the kind .… Whatever the reason, the Viroma was still alone, still rolling south-eastwards in a vast expanse of empty sea and sky. Another hour passed, and then another and it was high noon, a blazing, burning sun riding almost vertically overhead in the oven of the sky and for the first time Captain Findhorn was allowing himself the luxury of the first tentative stirrings of hope: the Carimata Straits and darkness and the Java Sea and they might dare begin to think of home again. The sun rolled over its zenith, noon passed, and the minutes crept on again, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, each minute dragging longer and longer as hope began to rise once more. And then, at twenty-four minutes past noon, hope had turned to dust and the long wait was over.
A gunner on the fo’c’sle saw it first—a tiny black speck far to the south-west, materialising out of the heat haze, high above the horizon. For a few seconds it seemed to remain there, stationary in the sky, a black, meaningless dot suspended in the air, and then, almost all at once, it was no longer tiny but visibly swelling in size with every breath the watchers took, and no longer meaningless, but taking shape, hardening in definition through the shimmering haze until the outline of fuselage and wings could be clearly seen, so clearly as to be unmistakable. A Japanese Zero fighter, probably fitted with long-range tanks, and even as the watchers on the Viroma recognised it the muted thunder of the aero engine came at them across the stillness of the sea.
The Zero droned in steadily, losing height by the second and heading straight for them. It seemed at first as if the pilot intended flying straight across the Viroma, but, less than a mile away, he banked sharply to starboard and started to circle the ship at a height of about five hundred feet. He made no move to attack, and not a gun fired aboard the Viroma. Captain Findhorn’s orders to his gunners had been explicit—no firing except in self-defence: their ammunition was limited and they had to conserve it for the inevitable bombers. Besides, there was always the chance that the pilot might be deceived by the newly-painted name of Siyushu Maru and the large flag of the Rising Sun which had taken the place of Resistencia and the flag of the Argentine Republic a couple of days previously—about one chance in ten thousand, Findhorn thought grimly. The brazen effrontery and the sheer unexpectedness that had carried the Viroma thus far had outlived their usefulness.
For almost ten minutes the Zero continued to circle the Viroma, never much more than half a mile away, banking steeply most of the time. Then two more ’planes—Zero fighters also—droned up from the south-west and joined the first. Twice all three of them circled the ship, then the first pilot broke formation and made two fore-and-aft runs, less than a hundred yards away, the canopy of his cockpit pushed right back so that the watchers on the bridge could see his face—or what little of it was visible behind helmet, goggles on forehead and transmitter mouthpiece—as the pilot took in every detail of the ship. Then he banked away sharply and rejoined the others: within seconds they were in line ahead formation, dipping their wings in mocking salute and heading north-west, climbing steadily all the time.
Nicolson let go his breath in a long, soundless sigh and turned to Findhorn. “That bloke will never know how lucky he is.” He jerked his thumb upwards towards the Hotchkiss emplacements. “Even our pop-gun merchants up top could have chewed him into little bits.”
“I know, I know.” His back against the dodger screen, Findhorn stared bleakly after the disappearing fighters. “And what good would it have done? Just wasted valuable ammunition, that’s all. He wasn’t doing us any harm—all the harm he could do he’d done long before he came anywhere near us. Our description, right down to the last rivet, our position, course and speed—his command H.Q. got that over the radio long before he came anywhere near us.” Findhorn lowered his glasses and turned round heavily. “We can’t do anything about our description and position, but we can about our course. 200, Mr. Nicolson, if you please. We’ll try for the Macclesfield Channel.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Nicolson hesitated. “Think it’ll make any difference, sir?”
“None whatsoever.” Findhorn’s voice was just a little weary. “Somewhere within two hundred and fifty miles from here laden bombers—altitude bombers, dive-bombers, torpedo bombers—are already taking off from Japanese airfields. Scores of them. Prestige is vital. If we escaped, Japan would be the laughing-stock of their precious Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and they can’t afford to lose anybody’s confidence.” Findhorn looked directly at Nicolson, his eyes quiet and sad and remote. “I’m sorry, Johnny, sorry for little Peter and the girl and all the rest of them. They’ll get us all right. They got the Prince of Wales and the Repulse: they’ll massacre us. They’ll be here in just over an hour.”
“So why alter course, sir?”
“So why do anything. Give us another ten minutes, perhaps, before they locate us. A gesture, my boy—empty, I know, but still a gesture. Even the lamb turns and runs before the wolf-pack tears him to pieces.” Findhorn paused a moment, then smiled. “And speaking of lambs, Johnny, you might go below and drive our little flock into the fold.”
Ten minutes later Nicolson was back on the bridge. Findhorn looked at him expectantly.
“All safely corralled, Mr. Nicolson?”
“Afraid not, sir.” Nicolson touched the three golden bars on his epaulets. “The soldiers of today are singularly unimpressed by authority. Hear anything, sir?”
Findhorn looked at him in puzzlement, listened, then nodded his head. “Footsteps. Sounds like a regiment up above.”
Nicolson nodded. “Corporal Fraser and his two merry men. When I told them to get into the pantry and stay there the corporal asked me to raffle myself. His feelings were hurt, I think. They can muster three rifles and a sub-machine-gun between them, and I suspect they’ll be ten times as effective as the two characters with the Hotchkisses up there.”
“And the rest?”
“Same story with the other soldiers—off with their guns right aft. No heroics anywhere—all four of them just kind of grim and thoughtful. Just kids. The sick men are still in the hospital—too sick to be moved. Safe there as anywhere, I suppose: there’s a couple of nurses with them.”
“Four of them?” Findhorn frowned. “But I thought—”
“There were five,” Nicolson acknowledged. “Fifth’s a shellshock case, I imagine. Alex something—don’t know his name. He’s useless—nerves shot to ribbons. I dragged him along to join the others in the pantry.
“All the others accounted for. Old Farnholme wasn’t too keen on leaving the engineers’ office but when I pointed out that the pantry was the only compartment in the superstructure that didn’t open to the outside, that it had steel instead of the usual wooden bulkheads, and that it had a couple of protective bulkheads fore and aft and three on either side he was over there like a shot.”
Findhorn’s mouth twisted. “Our gallant army. Colonel Blimp to the ramparts, but not when the guns start firing. A bad taste
in the mouth, Johnny, and quite out of character. The saving grace of the Blimps of this world is that they don’t know what fear is.”
“Neither does Farnholme.” Nicolson was positive. “I’d take very long odds on that. But I think he’s worried about something, badly worried.” Nicolson shook his head. “He’s a queer old bird, sir, and he’s some very personal reason for taking shelter: but it’s got nothing to do with saving his own skin.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Findhorn shrugged. “I don’t see that it matters anyway, not now. Van Effen with him?”
“In the dining-saloon. He thought Siran and his pals might pick an awkward time to start trouble. He has his gun on them. They won’t start anything.” Nicolson smiled faintly.
“Van Effen strikes me as a very competent gentleman indeed.”
“You left Siran and his men in the saloon?” Findhorn pursed his lips. “Our suicide parlour. Wide open to fore-and-aft strafing attacks and a cannon shell wouldn’t even notice the shuttering on these windows.” It was more a question than statement, and Findhorn matched it with his look, half-quizzical, half-expectant, but Nicolson merely shrugged his shoulders and turned away, the cold blue eyes lost in indifference and quartering the sun-hazed horizon to the north.
The Japanese returned at twelve minutes past two o’clock in the afternoon, and they came in force. Three or four planes would have been enough: the Japanese sent fifty. There were no delays, no tentative skirmishing, no preliminary altitude bombing, just the long curving sweep to the south-west and then that single, shattering attack out of the sun, a calculated, precision-engineered attack of dovetailing torpedo-bombers, dive-bombers and Zeros, an attack the skill of whose execution was surpassed only by its singleminded savagery and ferocity. From the moment that the first Zero swept in at deck level, shells from its twin cannon smashing into the bridge, until the last torpedo-bomber lifted and banked away from the concussive blast of its own detonating torpedo, only three minutes passed. But they were three minutes that transformed the Viroma from the finest, most modern tanker of the Anglo-Arabian fleet, from twelve thousand tons of flawless steel with all the guns on deck chattering their puny defiance at the incoming enemy, to a battered, blazing, smoke-enshrouded shambles with all the guns fallen silent, the engines gone and nearly all the crew dying or already dead. Massacre, ruthless, inhuman massacre with but one saving grace—the merciless fury of the attack tempered only by its merciful speed.
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