South By Java Head (29 page)

"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 spkit 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 I 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 co-operating."
"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 lie 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 sea-anchor 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 bar-taut anchor warp holding the stern pointing straight in to 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.
The jagged rock -- or maybe it was a knife-edge of coral -- sliced the bottom out of the rushing boat, from the stern clear back to the bows. The jarring, braking shock jerked people free from their clutching handholds, flung them in headlong confusion, all arms and bodies and legs, towards the stern, and hurled two or three over the side into the water. A second later the wrecked boat slewed violently to the side and overturned, catapulting everyone into the seething afterwash of the surf.
Of the seconds that followed no one had afterwards any more than a confused, inchoate recollection, a recollection of being rolled over and over by the surging sea, of swallowing sea-water and scrambling to their feet on the shingly, shelving beach only to be knocked down and buffeted by the inverted lifeboat, scrambling to their feet again to have their legs sucked from under them by the retreating seas, struggling upright again and wading, staggering ashore to fling themselves down on the beach in gasping, heart-pounding exhaustion.
Nicolson made three trips to the beach altogether. The first was with Miss Plenderleith. The shock of the collision had flung her hard against him even as they went over the stern, and he had instinctively tightened his arm round her as they had gone to the bottom together. She had been almost twice the weight he had expected, she had both her forearms locked through the handles of her heavy canvas travelling bag, and resisted Nicolson's efforts to tear it away with what he could only imagine to be a strength -- an unreasoning suicidal strength -- born of fear and panic. But he had got her ashore somehow, still grimly clutching her bag, waited his chance for the receding surf, then plunged back into the sea to help Vannier carry the captain ashore. Findhorn hadn't wanted assistance, he kept on repeating that he didn't want assistance, but his legs and his strength had gone as a result of his wound and the suffering of the past week, and he would have drowned where he had lain, in a couple of feet of water. Slipping, stum bling, falling and getting up again, they had carried him ashore bodily and dumped him on the shingle beyond the reach of the waves.