South by Java Head

by Alistair MacLean

  “Can you see it?” Miss Plenderleith repeated urgently. Nicolson was startled, but didn’t show it. He nodded slowly, carefully. The butt of the carbine was less than a foot from his hand.

  “It’s cocked,” Miss Plenderleith said quietly. “It’s ready to fire. Foster said it was ready to fire.”

  This time Nicolson did look at her, slow astonishment and wonder in his face, his eyes blinking in the driving rain as he tried to read her expression. And then he had forgotten all about Miss Plenderleith, and he was half out of his seat, staring intently for'ard, his head automatically reaching for the carbine.

  Even at that distance of forty or fifty feet the sound of the explosion was deafening and the sheer physical shock of the pressure wave like an invisible blow in their faces. Smoke and flames belched out through a great hole blown in the starboard side and almost at once the torpedo boat was heavily on fire amidships. The guards, their charge completely forgotten, had swung round to face for'ard, but one of them, caught off-balance by the force of the explosion, stumbled, flung away his machine-gun in a clawing, desperate attempt to regain balance and save himself, failed and fell backwards over the stern into the sea: the other had only taken a couple of running paces forward when the blast of the carbine in Nicolson’s hand pitched him forward on his face, dead. Even as he was falling, McKinnon was plunging towards the bows, an axe in his hand, and one vicious blow on the tow-rope taut-stretched across the gunwale severed it completely. Immediately, Nicolson pushed the tiller hard over to starboard, and the lifeboat slewed away heavily to the west. The torpedo boat still throbbed north-east on unaltered course, and within half a minute all signs of it, even the flames that twisted high above the bridge, were completely lost in the rain-squalls and the rapidly falling darkness.

  Swiftly, and in a strange unanimity of silence, they stepped the mast, hoisted the lug and jib, and bore off into the rain and the gloom with as much speed as they could command from their tattered sails. With the port gunwale dipping perilously low, Nicolson steered a point north of west: when the torpedo boat recovered from the shock and the fire—and it was probably too large a craft to be permanently crippled by an explosion even of that magnitude—it would come looking for them, but it would almost certainly go looking towards the south-west, in the direction the wind was blowing, in the direction of the Sunda Strait and freedom.

  Fifteen minutes passed slowly by, fifteen minutes in which there was only the swift slap of the waves against the hull, the flapping of shredded sails, the creaking of blocks and the tap-tapping of the yard against the mast. Now and again someone would be about to speak, to seek out the reason for the explosion aboard the torpedo boat, then he would catch sight of that stiff-backed little figure with the ridiculous straw hat skewered on the grey bun of hair, and change his mind. There was something about the atmosphere, there was something about that little figure, about the upright carriage, about the indifference to the cold and the rain, about its fierce pride and complete helplessness that precluded easy conversation, that precluded any conversation at all.

  It was Gudrun Drachmann who had the courage to make the first move, the delicacy to make it without blundering. She rose carefully to her feet, the blanketed form of the little boy in her arm, and moved across the canted bottom-boards towards the empty seat beside Miss Plenderleith—the seat where the brigadier had been sitting. Nicolson watched her go, unconsciously holding his breath. Far better if she hadn’t gone. So easy to make a mistake, so almost impossible not to make a mistake. But Gudrun Drachmann made no mistake.

  For a minute or two they sat together, the young and the old, sat without moving, sat without speaking. Then the little boy, halfasleep in his wet blanket, stretched out a chubby hand and touched Miss Plenderleith on her wet cheek. She started, half turned in her seat, then smiled at the boy and caught her hand in his, and then, almost without thinking, she had the little boy on her lap and was hugging him in her thin arms. She hugged him tightly, but it was as if the child knew that there was something far amiss, he just stirred sleepily and looked at her gravely under heavy eyelids. Then, just as gravely, he smiled at her, and the old lady hugged him again, even more tightly, and smiled back down at him, smiled as if her heart was breaking. But she smiled.

  “Why did you come and sit here?” she asked the girl. You and the little one—why did you come?” Her voice was very low.

  “I don’t know.” Gudrun shook her head, almost as if the thought were occurring to her for the first time. “I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

  “It’s all right. I know.” Miss Plenderleith took her hand and smiled at her. “It’s very curious, it is really very curious. That you should come, I mean. He did it for you, he did it all for you—for you and the little one.”

  “You mean—”

  “Fearless Foster.” The words were ridiculous, but not the way Miss Plenderleith said them. She said them as if she were saying a prayer. “Fearless Foster Farnholme. That was what we used to call him, when we were in school. He was afraid of nothing that walked on earth.”

  “You have known him so long, Miss Plenderleith?”

  “He said you were the best of us all.” Miss Plenderleith hadn’t even heard the question. She shook her head musingly, her eyes soft with remembrance. “He teased me about you this afternoon. He said he didn’t know what the young men of the present generation were coming to and, by heaven, if he was thirty years younger, he’d have had you to the altar years ago.”

  “He was very kind.” Gudrun smiled without any embarrassment. “I’m afraid he didn’t know me very well.”

  “That’s what he said, that’s exactly what he said.” Miss Plenderleith gently removed the child’s thumb from his mouth: he was almost asleep. “Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn’t really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn’t count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn’t matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.” Miss Plenderleith smiled, her grief momentarily lost in nostalgic remembrance. “Foster used to complain that there were very few good-hearted people like himself left.”

  “Brigadier Farnholme was very kind,” Gudrun murmured.

  “Brigadier Farnholme was a very clever man,” Miss Plenderleith said in gentle reproof. “He was clever enough to—well, never mind. You and the little boy. He was very fond of the little boy.”

  “Trailing clouds of glory do we come,” Willoughby murmured.

  “What’s that?” Miss Plenderleith looked at him in surprise. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Just a passing thought, Miss Plenderleith.”

  Miss Plenderleith smiled at him, then sat gazing down at the little boy. Silence again, but a comfortable silence now. It was Captain Findhorn, speaking for the first time, who broke it, who asked the question they all wanted answered.

  “If we come home again, we will owe it all to Brigadier Farnholme. I do not think any of us will ever forget that. You have told us why he did it. You seem to have known him far better than any of us, Miss Plenderleith. Can you tell me how he did it.”

  Miss Plenderleith nodded. “I’ll tell you. It was very simple, because Foster was a very simple and direct man. You all noticed that big Gladstone bag he carried?”

  “We did.” Findhorn smiled. “The one he carried his—ah—supplies in.”

  “That’s right, whisky. Incidentally, he hated the stuff—used it only for local colour. Anyway, he left all the bottles and all the other contents of his bag behind on the island, in a hole in the rocks, I believe. Then he—”

  “What? What did you say?” It was Van Effen speaking, still groggy from Farnholme’s blow on the head, leaning so far forward on his seat that he winced with the pain of his injured leg. “He—he left all his stuff
behind?”

  “That’s what I said. Why should you find that so surprising, Mr. Van Effen?”

  “No reason at all, I suppose.” Van Effen leaned back and smiled at her. “Please continue.”

  “That’s all, really. He’d found lots of Japanese grenades on the beach that night and he’d stuffed fourteen or fifteen into his Gladstone bag.”

  “Into his bag?” Nicolson patted the seat beside him. “But they’re under here, Miss Plenderleith.”

  “He found more than he told you.” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was very low. “He took them all aboard with him, he spoke Japanese fluently and he had no difficulty in persuading them that he was carrying Jan Bekker’s plans with him. When he got below he was going to show them the plans, put his hand inside the bag, press a grenade release catch and leave his hand there. He said it would only take four seconds.”

  There was no moon that night, and no stars, only the dark scudding cloud-wrack overhead, and Nicolson drove the lifeboat on, for hour after hour, by guess and by God. The glass of the compass bowl had cracked, nearly all the spirit had escaped and the card was gyrating so uncontrollably that trying to read it in the feeble light of a failing torch was quite impossible. He steered instead by the wind, trying to keep it on the port quarter all the time, gambling that the trades would hold steady, and neither back nor veer to any appreciable degree. Even with the wind steady, handling the boat was difficult enough: more and more water was pouring in through the ruptured planks aft and she was sitting heavily by the stern, falling away to the south time after time.

  As the night passed his anxiety and tension increased, a tension that communicated itself to most of the others in the boat, few of whom slept that night. Shortly after midnight, even with the roughest dead reckoning, Nicolson knew that he must be within ten or twelve miles of the Sunda Straits. Not more, probably even a good deal less, perhaps only five miles. And he had reason to be anxious. Their chart of the Eastern Archipelago was now salt-stained, rotted and useless, but he remembered all too clearly the rocks, the reefs and the shoals that lay off the south-east coast of Sumatra. But he couldn’t remember where they were, and he didn’t know where the lifeboat was, perhaps even his latitude reckonings were so far out that they would miss the Straits altogether. Their chances of tearing the bottom out on some off-shore reef seemed as good as their chances of missing it: and the passengers were so sick, so tired and so hurt that were they to pile up not more than half a mile from land not half of them had a hope of survival. And, even if they missed all the waiting perils, they would still have to beach the boat through heavy surf.

  Shortly after two o’clock in the morning Nicolson sent the bo’sun and Vannier up to the bows to keep a lookout ahead. Half a dozen others volunteered to stand up and keep watch also, but Nicolson curtly ordered them to remain where they were, to lie as low as possible in the bottom of the boat and give maximum stability. He might have added, but he didn’t, that McKinnon’s eyes were probably better than all the others put together.

  Half an hour more passed, and suddenly Nicolson became aware that some subtle change was taking place. The change itself wasn’t sudden, it was the realisation of the change that struck at him almost like a blow and made him peer desperately ahead into the darkness. The long, low swell from the north-west was changing, it was becoming shorter and steeper with every minute that passed, but he was so tired, so physically exhausted with steering blindly all night long that he’d almost missed the change. And the wind was still the same, no stronger, no weaker than it had been for hours past.

  “McKinnon!” Nicolson’s hoarse shout had half a dozen dozing people struggling up to a sitting position. “We’re running into shallows!”

  “Aye, I think you’re right, sir.” The bo’sun’s voice, not particularly perturbed, carried clearly against the wind. He was standing upright on the mast thwart, on the port side, one hand gripping the mast, the other shading his eyes as he stared ahead into the night.

  “Can you see anything?”

  “Damn the thing I see,” McKinnon called back. “It’s a bloody black night, sir.”

  “Keep looking. Vannier?”

  “Sir?” The voice was excited, but steady enough for all that. On the brink of breakdown less than twelve hours ago, Vannier had made a remarkable recovery and seemed to have regained more life and energy than any of them.

  “Get the lug down! Fast as you can. Don’t furl it—no time. Van Effen, Gordon, give him a hand.” The lifeboat was beginning to pitch quite violently in the rapidly shortening seas. “See anything yet, Bo’sun?”

  “Nothing at all, sir.”

  “Cut Siran loose. And his two men. Send them back amidships.” He waited for half a minute until the three men came stumbling aft. “Siran, you and your men get a crutch apiece. Gordon, you get another. When I give the words you will ship oars and start pulling.”

  “Not tonight, Mr. Nicolson.”

  ”You said?”

  “You heard what I said. I said ‘not tonight’.” The tone was cool and insolent. “My hands are numb. And I’m afraid I don’t just feel like cooperating.”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool, Siran. Lives depend on this.”

  “Not mine.” Nicolson could see the white gleam of teeth in the darkness. “I am an excellent swimmer, Mr. Nicolson.”

  “You left forty people to die, didn’t you, Siran?” Nicolson asked obliquely. The safety-catch of his Colt clicked, unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. A second passed, two, three, then Siran slammed a crutch home into its socket, reached for an oar and muttered orders to his two men.

  “Thank you,” Nicolson murmured. He raised his voice. “Listen, all of you. I think we’re nearing shore. The chances are that there will be rocks or reefs off the beach, or a heavy surf running. The boat may founder or capsize—not likely, but it may.” It’ll be a ruddy miracle if it doesn’t, he thought bleakly. “If you find yourselves in the water, stick together. Hang on to the boat, the oars, lifebelts or anything that will float. And whatever happens, hang on to each other. Do you all understand?”

  There was a low murmur of assent. Nicolson flashed his torch round the inside of the boat. From what he could see in the sickly yellow light everybody was awake. Even their sodden, shapeless clothes couldn’t disguise the peculiar tenseness of their attitudes. Quickly he switched off the light. Weak though the beam was, his pupils were narrowing enough to affect his night vision and he knew it.

  “Still nothing, Bo’sun?” he called out.

  “Nothing at all, sir. It’s as black as a—wait a minute!” He stood there immobile, one hand on the mast, head cocked sideways, saying nothing.

  “What is it, man?” Nicolson shouted. “What can you see?”

  “Breakers!” McKinnon called. “Breakers or surf. I can hear it.”

  “Where? Where are they?”

  “Ahead. Can’t see them yet.” A pause. “Starboard bow, I think.”

  “Cut the jib!” Nicolson ordered. “Mast down, Vannier.” He leaned far over on the tiller, bringing the lifeboat round to face wind and sea. She answered the helm slowly, soggily; there were at least fifty gallons of sea-water swishing about the after end of the boat, but she came round eventually: even water-logged and in a running sea, she’d still carried enough way from the thrust of the jib.

  “I can see it now.” It was McKinnon shouting from the bows. “Starboard quarter, sir.”

  Nicolson twisted in his seat, looked quickly over his shoulder. For a moment or two he could see nothing, he couldn’t even hear anything, and then he could both hear and see it, a thin white line in the darkness, a long continuous line that vanished and appeared again, closer than it had been when it faded. Surf, it must be surf, no breakers ever looked like that in the darkness. Thank God for so much anyway. Nicolson faced for'ard again.

  “Right, Bo’sun, let it go.”

  McKinnon had been waiting the word, the iron-hooped mouth of the sea-anchor in his hands. Now he
flung it as far for'ard into the sea as he could, paying out the warp as the sea-anchor filled and started dragging.

  “Get those oars out!” Nicolson had already unshipped the rudder and drawn the shaft of the steering oar up through the grummet, sculling furiously to keep the lifeboat head on to sea until the seaanchor took hold: no easy work when he couldn’t make out the set of the waves in the darkness, when he’d nothing to guide him but the wind in his face and the water-logged movement of the boat. He could hear the scraping and muffled oaths as men tried to free trapped oars, then the metallic clunks as they dropped into the crutches. “Give way together,” he called. “Easy, now, easy!”

  He had no hope that they would pull together in the darkness, and he didn’t expect it. Just so long as they pulled, he could correct any excesses with his steering oar. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. The line of surf was almost directly astern now, and its low sullen booming carried clearly to his ears, even against the wind. It could have been fifty yards away, it could have been two hundred and fifty yards away. It was impossible to tell in the darkness.

  He faced round again, tried to peer for'ard, but the wind whipped the rain and the salt spray into his eyes, and he could see nothing. The wind appeared to be strengthening. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “How’s it taking, McKinnon?”

  “Och, it’s just fine, sir. Taking grand.” Several fathoms of the sea-anchor were already stretched out tautly over the bow, and the bo’sun had just finished stabbing the attached oil-bag with his gully knife. He’d made a thorough job of the stabbing, the oil wouldn’t have to last for long, and the more they had over the surface of the sea the easier would be their passage through the surf. He passed the oil-bag over the bows, let some more of the warp pass through his hands, then tied it securely to the mast thwart.

  They hadn’t taken all the beaching precautions a moment too soon. The surf had been much nearer fifty than two hundred and fifty yards, and already they were almost on it. Carefully, expertly, making the fullest possible use of the oars, steering oar and sea anchor, Nicolson slowly backed the lifeboat on to the beginning of the smooth convexity of the swell of the surf. Almost immediately the boat picked up speed, rose and rode in swiftly with the giant wave as the oars came out of the water and McKinnon pulled the tripping line of the sea-anchor, sped along smoothly and soundlessly as the surf curved its way into seething white destruction, checked suddenly as oars dipped and the tripping line was released at Nicolson’s sharp command, then plunged over the breaking crest of the surf and raced in to the shelving beach in a phosphorescent smother of foam and spray—there had been no time for the sea to carry the oil so far ahead—with the bartaut anchor warp holding the stern pointing straight into the shore, and the white water passing them by, out-distancing them in the race for the shore. It was then and only then, when the worst was safely by, that Nicolson, peering intently astern, saw something that shouldn’t have been there. His hoarse shout of warning came almost on the instant of recognition, but it came too late.