There was a song about Zamboanga, Matheson thought vaguely. There'd be a different tune if their success held. Louder, no romance in it.
But there was also something unlovely about that wide width of clear water. If they were caught by destroyers it would be several hours' run before they could hide in the clutter of the Sulu Archipelago, and they could only hide in darkness, and entering that lot at night might be less than healthy.
But then, Matheson comforted himself, they had been here several days without sight of a warship. And for how much longer? That thought, as he crossed back to Dutchy, he forced deep back into his consciousness.
Like the gunners, the crow's nest lookout earned his pay that rewarding day.
The first sighting in the new area was made just before lunch. About five thousand tons, the Jap approached them from ahead, moving methodically and without alarm at about eight knots. Dutchy kept her down to fifteen, and her guns trained fore and aft.
"He's come through Basilan Straight," he judged. This was a narrow stretch between the Sulu Archipelago and Zamboanga. "I'd say he's rounding the Saranganis and then heading up to Davao. Make a note of that, Pilot. Looks like there could be a big concentration of Japs up that way, to need so many supply ships."
"Aye aye, sir."
What everybody thought, and nobody mentioned, was that those Japs might be interested in why their supply ships hadn't arrived...
"She's maintaining course," Dutchy said. "This is too easy."
He fooled neither himself nor his listeners. It was easy, and would continue to be easy, just so long as no one knew they were there. Then their thoughts were contracted.
"Open fire," Dutchy ordered.
The shells left, and landed, and Dutchy through his satisfaction at the red splashes reflected on how quickly his team of pirates had swung into the routine of this new and profitable game. No need now to designate the point of aim, or the form of firing. With rapid broadsides Jackal was biting at the Jap's bridge, killing the important people quickly, smashing the wireless gear which could kill them.
In all that action Dutchy spoke no word except to the wheelhouse. Without orders, with the Jap's bridge a spilling mess of metal, the director shifted aim to the waterline. This ship was heavily loaded, but there was room enough for the sea. The weight of water and munitions combined. She sank on almost a level keel, straight down, slow and smooth. A minute later the sea burst up as her boilers exploded, but that was a needless disruption.
Jackal moved on, skirting the faces and bodies, the faces shouted obscenities and the bodies bobbing gently as she passed.
"They seem annoyed," Matheson commented; he was becoming used to slaughter.
"You know why," Dutchy grinned, humorously.
"That's obvious enough."
"It is?"
"Well, of course..."
"I wonder. It hasn't occurred to you they might think they've been sunk by their cobbers, by mistake?"
"That's nonsense! They'd know a Jap destroyer would know who they were."
"On the face of it, yes. But those men are shocked. They're not thinking as brilliantly clearly as you, my boy. They're only thinking what they've seen, and experienced. And that's a trigger-happy Jap destroyer too edgy to make sure before she lets go. And now that destroyer is intent only on clearing out from the scene of her crime, hoping no one survives to tell the tale."
"Oh hell..." Matheson said with exasperation, "they've seen our ensign."
Dutchy gestured aft. "Look."
Matheson looked. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Yeoman!" Dutchy snapped.
"Sir?"
"You forgot to hoist our ensign."
"Hell... Sorry, sir, I was busy looking out for her cobbers..."
The yeoman's face was taut with concern. Dutchy's grin wiped it away.
"Forget our ensign," he said, "let the red ball fly. Let's make confusion worse confounded."
"I'm quite sure" Matheson said, "that that is highly illegal."
"Fine," the fox nodded. "If those boys in the water get back to spill the beans, then the Jap destroyers will know they're after a ship wearing their own ensign. But they won't know who's knotting who. They'll have to get very close, and be very careful, before they open fire. That'll give us a chance to let `em have it. And here, Bertie, we have to take every chance offered to us."
"Fair enough," Matheson said. "But if it's so easy and profitable to wear a false ensign, why don't all navies do it? What's to prevent them?"
Dutchy looked at him poker-faced.
"National honour," he said.
"And you haven't any?" Matheson dared.
"Sure," Dutchy replied, easily. "When I'm against an honourable foe."
And before young Matheson could answer that speciousness the crow's nest interrupted:
"Bearing fine on the port bow, smoke."
Less than an hour found that funnel smoke considerably added to...
A ship's oil bunkers extend right to her sides. With the bridge demolished in what had become an expert routine, the shells were sent into her bunkers. Like black blood the oil gushed forth. More shells followed. The heat in bursting high-explosive is intense. Oil is made to burn. The luckless Jap was curtained by boiling billows of smoke.
Dutchy was satisfied and worried at the same time. That sky-reaching tombstone could be seen for miles. It could frighten off other possible prey, or bring inquisitive destroyers. He didn't want to, but he had to waste another torpedo.
With her wounded belly ripped wide open the merchantman reeled and went under. There was a ten-knot breeze. On it the betraying smoke drifted to the eastward, and dissipated long before reaching the coast of Mindanao. Jackal moved on.
"Log that, Pilot," Dutchy said. "Six thousand tons. Full."
The next ship was sighted late in the afternoon to the westward, on her port beam.
"We'll alter towards," Dutchy said. "A friendly destroyer doing her inspection duty. Action-stations."
Easily, without fuss or urgency, Jackal came round to the west. And that unhurried turn very nearly took her into disaster.
The bridge and wireless-office were destroyed, the Jap was heeling. She was finished. Or should have been.
Jackal moved slowly down her side, guns pumping. If anyone noticed the movement on the Jap's stern they did not comment. Why should they? Those crewmen were throwing those crates over the side simply as additional rafts. Obviously they were working so furiously because they were in a panic.
So that no one-not even Bludger Bent on his pom-pom, who was watching the shells burst against her side-saw what was revealed when the wall of crates was demolished.
But they heard harshly enough.
Not the crack of the Jap's stern gun. That was smothered in Jackal's continuous roaring. But a depth-charge exploding makes a loud and distinctive sound, especially when it bursts out of the water.
Her continued life was a miracle. On her quarter-deck she carried scores of amatol-filled canisters. If they had exploded together or in succession the whole stern would have been ripped off her. But that evilly-aimed shell, streaking low over the quarterdeck, struck a charge on her far side and punched it clear before the heat of the shell's bursting fired the amatol. Thunder erupted, and an eye-searing splash of red, but the rest of her touchy stern was left intact. Saved by a few yards of distance.
Dutchy bellowed. But Bludger had seen.
It would have taken too long for the heavy mountings to shift target. The pom-pom was lighter. Olaf spun his training wheel like a demented merry-go-round. The eight silent barrels swung. The next round was already loading into the Jap gun. They had seconds.
Before his webbed sight came on, hoping to panic them, Bludger opened fire.
To the right of the four-inch gun the steel deck suddenly grew red flowers. Startled, men looked up.
The gun-layer looked up.
They shouldn't have done that. They had seconds in which to cripple their tormentor
and they wasted those seconds. A pom-pom trains fast, it is designed to follow a diving fighter. A storm of steel burst on the gun.
Bludger kept his trigger pressed. Hosing fire. Eight barrels coughed and jerked and ran out again and hundreds of two-pounder shells flayed the mounting. It was tough steel, and even that lashing whip could not seriously harm it. But steel jolts fuses into action, and human bodies are not as tough.
Two loading numbers, standing a little to the right of the gun, were cut literally in half. With a harsh and sickening clarity Matheson saw the four separate parts stagger, and fall on the deck. He saw the parts still jerking, but that was not life, it was the lash of Bludger's whip.
Then Jackal's after gun, seconded temporarily from its other mission of destruction, roared. Again. That second hurtling shell demolished what had withstood the pom-pom. Bludger ceased firing and stared with satisfaction at the split ruin of the Jap mounting. With a forearm he wiped his sweating forehead and called over the gun to Olaf.
"Better watch them bastards from now on. They might come that caper again."
And on the bridge the captain ordered:
"Detail a hand to watch for that sort of thing, Number One. That was close. Give me a damage report on the quarterdeck."
Matheson, part of whose duties included watching for that sort of thing, answered a little more crisply than usual:
"Aye aye, sir!"
But Dutchy said no more about it. The lesson had been learned more succinctly than he could deliver it. There would be more than one pair of eyes from now on watching for movement on a target's stem. And for the moment Dutchy was eminently satisfied. The tally of ships met and sunk was growing very nicely. It was like, as he commented to Matheson with the scummy patch well astern:
"The Atlantic coast of the United States, remember?"
Matheson nodded. Shortly after Pearl Harbour the U-boats had swarmed over to America's east coast. Not having learned their Lesson from the British convoy system, the Americans had continued despatching their merchantmen and tankers without escort and not in convoy. This suited the U-boats splendidly; they slaughtered at will up and down the coast from the Gulf of Mexico to New York. The pickings had been juicy. Like here.
Dutchy looked at his watch, and then more significantly at the sun. The flaring Ball was only a few degrees above the horizon. With a glance at Matheson he walked to the chart.
"We're clearing out?" Matheson said.
"We've done enough for today. The men need sleep tonight."
"But we're clearing out?"
"No." Dutchy's forefinger touched the mountainous representation of Basilan Island, south of the strait. "We'll hole up behind Matanal Point."
"But that's only a few miles west of our last sinking. You're not staying in this area, for God's sake?"
"You don't think we should?"
"Come on..."
"That's what the Japs will think," Dutchy grinned. They'll reckon only a congenital idiot would hang about here. If they're awake-up-and it can't be too long before they are-they'll search further to the south." His finger tapped. "Mantanal Point. That'll do us nicely."
"You shifty old bastard," Matheson said, but wisely in the privacy of his thoughts. He took up the parallel ruler and laid-off a course.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Japs were awake-up. At least partly.
From his harbour-side office, Vice-admiral (Chu-sho) Samurati could see the whole of Manila Bay, right down to Corregidor Island in its throat.
The time was early morning, considerably earlier than Samurati was normally to be found in his office. Lieutenant-Commander Holland was on his bridge conning his ship out to sea past Matanal Point, but then he knew what he was up to. Samurati's thoughts and intentions were not so definite.
He was looking at Corregidor but that rocky bastion of earlier gallantry made no impingement on his consciousness. Samurati had an owlish face, an expression which his eyes belied, and now his face was corrugated by ridges of frowning thought."
"Submarines," he said, without turning his head.
"Almost certainly, Chu-sho. There are three ships failed to arrive and no surface units reported. Submarines, of course."
The speaker was Captain Sigure, chief of staff, His face and body were thin. Neither man was short, in the accepted tradition of Japanese, and neither wore glasses. Their eyes were keen.
Samurati snapped his fingers. "Signal."
Sigure handed him the flimsy sheet. Still facing the dawnlit harbour Samurati read it again. His face was tough, and expressionless as he noted the tally. "Three ships," he said slowly. "All bound for Davao. By now there could be more." He put out his hand behind him and Sigure took the signal. "We have lost ships there before? In Davao Gulf?"
"None, Chu-sho."
Samurati turned from the window. His voice was flat, the tone of a man used to losses and the prevention of their continuance.
"We will increase our destroyer patrols. How many in harbour?"
"Two flotillas." Sigure was frowning. "But they are needed, Chusho. There is the carrier force..."
"There are submarines down there," Samurati broke in. "It is bad enough that they sink our supply ships. It will be worse if they are not attacked. That sort of encouragement will bring their friends up.
They have to be taught a lesson, quick and severe. Route two destroyers down through Basilan Straight. See to it."
"Yes, Chu-sho."
Sigure picked up a telephone.
Jackal picked up her first target of the day while her men were at stand-easy. Samurati's destroyers were five hundred miles to the northward-seventeen hours at an urgent thirty knots.
But Jackal's men were not thinking about enemy destroyers. So casual had they become about sending fat helpless ships to the bottom that when the alarm bells rang their only concern was for their unfinished coffee. Stand-easy was a pleasant time on a hot sunny morning. The morning looked unpleasant for the Japanese ship.
Her masts were sighted almost right ahead up toward the bottom of Illana Bay. Shortly her hull marched up over the northern horizon, and continued to meet them.
"No alarm yet," Matheson said.
Dutchy grinned with satisfaction. "Looks like we're still a ghost ship."
He was wrong, of course, yet there was an excellent reason for the merchantman's absence of alarm. A general signal had gone out from Manila-but warning all shipping of the presence of enemy submarines. This ship was not at all unhappy about sighting an apparently friendly destroyer. Perhaps, they thought on her bridge, she might escort them.
It looked as if the destroyer had that intention in mind for she came in very close. And then, oddly, her guns swung, and then, incredibly, they belched flame.
Two close broadsides and there were no thoughts any more on that bridge. Then the usual "Abandon ship" order was flashed. It was doubtful if any Japanese understood the yeoman's plain English, but his signal was not needed. They took to boats and rafts with alacrity. Jackal's teeth took to her fat belly.
Then there was only the boats and the scum-fouled sea, and Dutchy saying:
"Five thousand I think, Number One?"
"I'd say about five, yes sir."
That was her epitaph. Men sponged out guns and stowed the empty cordite cylinders below.
More than anything, this last task impressed on them the oddness and the easiness of their present occupation. In normal action, against their own kind or aircraft, cordite cylinders were heaved over the side to prevent loading numbers slipping on their rolling brass. This lot was like a practice shoot...
But for most of that burning day further practice was denied them. Certain now that no warships patrolled this hitherto untouched area, Dutchy took her well up into Illana Bay, even past Cotabato on the Mindanao River. And sighted nothing.
She turned and moved south into Moro Gulf, as far down as Basilan Strait before Dutchy swung her and coursed north again. Up and down she prowled, never very far from the strai
t, the opening for ships heading for Davao. The sun lowered.
It looked as though, as Matheson commented:
"They might be on to us, you know."
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