Varma gazed anxiously towards the south. ‘Could we not we risk it anyway? It cannot be more than a couple of miles…’
‘Look, mate, at the moment it’s just overheating. That means there’s a chance we can fix it with the tools we have on board. Now, we can risk pushing on if you like, but if something burns out and breaks in the next half an hour… well, I don’t see any shops around here where we can pick up any spare parts, do you?’
‘Can you repair it?’ asked Hamilton.
Quinn rolled up his sleeves. ‘Seeing as how I don’t see any sails or paddles on board, and we’re adrift in one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, you’d better hope I can.’
* * *
Keeping a lookout from the Chinese temple, Kitty saw the lambo long before she realised it was headed towards Pulau Berdayung. It came from the south-west and looked as though it would pass no nearer than a couple of miles to the south, when it suddenly turned north and began sailing directly towards the island. She wished she had a pair of binoculars so she could study it more closely. To the north lay Singapore, wreathed in its great pall of dark, dirty-grey smoke from the burning fuel depots below.
She had been on Pulau Berdayung for twenty-four hours now. The priest had been willing to share his food and water with them, so there was no danger of starvation, but the island did not offer a great deal in the way of entertainment: once you had made an offering at the Chinese temple, there was not a great deal to do. After breakfast she had tried the wireless again and had the reassurance of receiving a reply, worded like crossword clues, so she was satisfied it was from Hamilton and not some Japanese trying pass himself off as the colonel. It simply told her to sit tight. Since then, she had spent the rest of the day exploring the island, not that an island a mile long and three hundred yards wide required a great of exploring.
The sultan spent the day watching the turtles basking on one of the beaches. Now he climbed the steps to join her by one of the lion statues in front of the temple, watching the lambo approach. ‘Surely that is not the sort of vessel Colonel Hamilton would send to rescue us?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose there can be many motorised vessels left in Singapore. Perhaps that was the best he could find.’
‘Then why is it not approaching from the direction of Keppel Harbour?’
The same thought had already occurred to her. ‘I don’t know.’
Although the lambo was still the best part of a mile away, at the rate it was coming on it would reach the island within a few minutes. The two of them followed the steps down through the trees to greet it. No ensign flew from the jackstaff above the transom, so it was not until the Mahsuri moored alongside the jetty and two dozen Japanese soldiers poured ashore that Kitty realised this was not Hamilton’s vessel, but Yashiro’s. Grabbing the sultan by the hand, she dragged him off the path and into the foliage.
‘Where are we going?’ demanded the sultan.
‘We must hide!’
‘On an island as small as this? What good will that do? Fate is against us: we might as well bow to the inevitable and surrender to them.’
Kitty shook her head. ‘I’ll be damned before I make anything too easy for those blighters. Hamilton’s on his way; it can’t be much longer till he gets here.’ Though it was nearly eight hours since she had last contacted him on the wireless. Surely it did not take eight hours to sail from Singapore to Pulau Berdayung?
As they clambered around a crag of rock jutting from the foliage on the slopes of the hillock, she heard voices above and glanced up to see half a dozen Japanese soldiers marching up the path to the temple with rifles at the high port. Kitty and the sultan pressed themselves back against the rock below.
‘Then I pray Hamilton gets here soon,’ murmured the sultan. ‘And that he brings plenty of men with him!’
Nineteen
Sunday 1900 – 2010
Yashiro paced up and down outside the temple. On the slopes below, he could see Shimura’s men thrashing about in the undergrowth with bayonets fixed to the muzzles of their rifles as they quartered the island.
‘How difficult can it be to find one woman and one old man on an island as small as this?’ he wondered out loud.
‘Maybe they’re not on the island.’ Shimura leaned against one of the lion statues, smoking a cigarette. ‘Maybe Hamilton’s already picked them up. Maybe we’re wasting our time.’
‘Maybe,’ grated Yashiro. ‘But if that’s so, we’ve lost her and there’s nothing we can do about it; unless Hamilton was foolish enough to take her back to Singapore, in which case she’ll fall into our hands soon enough. But if she is still on this island… if she slips through our fingers because we abandoned our search too readily…’
A great cheer sounded faintly from where the Mahsuri was tied. ‘What was that?’ wondered Yashiro.
Corporal Toriyama appeared on the deck of the lambo and jumped to the jetty. ‘I think we’re about to find out,’ said Shimura.
Yashiro watched as Toriyama marched briskly down the jetty and ascended the steps to the temple. The corporal was panting by the time he reached the top, but his face shone with more than sweat. He bowed to Yashiro. ‘Captain-sama, it gives me the greatest of honour to inform you we have won.’
‘Won? Won what?’
‘The battle for Singapore. We just heard it announced on the radio. The English General Percival has surrendered unconditionally. A ceasefire is to take effect from twenty-thirty hours tonight.’
Yashiro glanced at his watch. It was just past seven o’clock. Shimmering like burnished copper, a fiery path led across the rippling sea towards the setting sun. In another three-quarters of an hour it would be pitch-black night, and then they might as well give up searching entirely.
‘That’s wonderful!’ exclaimed Shimura. ‘I can scarcely believe it!’
Yashiro arched an eyebrow. ‘Surely you did not doubt our ultimate victory against the English?’
‘Yes, but… Singapore! Chikusho, this is the end of the English Empire!’
‘Not the end, Shimura. The beginning. The dawning of a glorious new era, the era of the Pan Asiatic Co-Prosperity Sphere, under the auspices of the Japanese Empire!’
‘Shall I tell the men to break off searching?’
Yashiro hesitated before answering. It was tempting, but… ‘No. The battle is won, not the war. Do you think now we have chased the English out of Singapore, they will run from the East, never to return? But if I’m right, the woman can not only tell us whether the English have broken our codes, she can be made to betray their codes. With such knowledge in our hands, final victory is assured!’
He entered the temple. Inside, the old priest was lovingly polishing a bronze incense burner decorated with dragons. Yashiro grabbed him by his embroidered robes, hauled him to his feet and slammed him against one of the pillars.
‘Where is she?’ he shouted in the priest’s face, feigning rage to frighten him into telling the truth. ‘We know she was here. I recognise that motorboat with a bullet hole in its fuel tank tied up at the jetty! She’s still here, isn’t she? Where? Where are you hiding her?’
‘I don’t think he knows.’ Breathing hard after ascending the steps from the jetty, Captain Atsumi had sauntered into the temple with his hands in his pockets.
Yashiro threw the old man to the floor. ‘What would you know about it?’ he demanded of Atsumi.
‘Plenty. I know where she is, her and the sultan.’
Yashiro blinked at him. ‘You do?’
‘We’ve just caught them. They were hiding in the bow locker on board the Mahsuri.’
‘Hiding on board the… chikusho!’
Shimura laughed out loud. ‘Didn’t I tell you she wasn’t on the island?’
‘I reckon they made their way along the underside of the jetty, swum around the Mahsuri’s stern and climbed over the far gunwale,’ explained Atsumi. ‘I think they were biding their time to try to seize my ship and sail away, leaving us stra
nded.’
‘A woman and an old man?’
‘Don’t underestimate the woman, Captain Yashiro. If one of my deckhands hadn’t spotted a wet footprint on the deck… It took three of my crew to subdue her, and one of them a black belt in karate-do.’
Yashiro turned to Shimura. ‘Make sure the sultan is secured under guard, and bring the woman to me.’
* * *
‘Ow! The bloody mongrel!’ Quinn sucked at a cut on his hand for a moment, before raising a fist to strike the sampan’s engine, when it occurred to him that might do more harm than good, to his own hand as well as the engine. He restrained himself.
‘Everything all right there, Bluey?’ asked Torrance. Ashore he was usually the mechanical wizard; it was emasculating to be relegated to engineer’s mate, so he was taking a perverse pleasure in Quinn’s discomfiture.
‘No, everything is not bloody all right. Pass me that monkey wrench.’
It was half past seven. The sun had sunk behind Pulau Blakang Mati a few minutes earlier and already the light was fading, casting a spectacular spectrum of orange and fuchsia across the sky. ‘If you don’t hurry up and get it fixed, it’s gonna be too dark to work.’
‘That’s the least of our problems,’ said Hamilton. ‘The longer we sit here drifting, the greater the chance the Japs will reach Pulau Berdayung ahead of us.’
‘May the gods help Third Officer Killigrew then,’ said Varma.
‘God help us all,’ said Hamilton. ‘If the Japs get her to talk – and they will – it’ll set the Allied cause back at least a year, perhaps more.’
Quinn sat up, binding a rag over the gash in his hand. ‘I think we can rule out the impeller on the raw-water pump, anyway. Let’s try the filter on the intake strainer.’ He unscrewed a cap from a piece of machinery, reaching into the turgid, dark-brown water it contained, and pulled out what looked like a cylinder of solid mud. ‘Yeah, I think we might’ve found the problem!’ He handed the cylinder to Torrance. ‘Clean that for me, would you?’
‘Why can’t you clean it yourself?’
‘Because I’m gonna be cleaning the inside of the strainer housing and flushing it through with water from the sea cock.’
Filling a pail with seawater, Torrance immersed the filter in it and began to rub it with his thumb so the silt was washed away. When Quinn had finished scrubbing the inside of the intake strainer, they replaced the filter in it. He restarted the engine. It began chugging away at once, but after a few seconds emitted a high-pitched whine and began to vibrate alarmingly. ‘Now what?’ wondered Quinn.
‘Air blockage in the pump feed?’ suggested Torrance.
‘What would you know about it?’
‘It’s just I couldn’t help noticing that when you replaced the cap on the intake strainer there was a good inch of air between the water level and the rim of the strainer housing, which means you’ve now got a nice fat bubble in your pump feed. But if you close this valve here, open that valve there, then ease the sea cock open a little and leave it until water starts spilling from that overflow there, that should flush the air out, just like bleeding a radiator.’
‘I thought you didn’t know anything about boat engines?’
‘What can I say, Bluey? I’m a fast learner. And after spending the last three hours watching you demonstrate how not to do it, I’d be a sorry sort of specimen if I hadn’t learned something.’
‘Bloody smart alec.’ Quinn did as Torrance suggested, and a minute later the sampan was on its way again, the engine chugging away merrily.
They caught their first glimpse of Pulau Berdayung up ahead as dusk swept over the tropical sky. ‘There it is,’ said Hamilton. ‘We should reach it in another half an hour.’
‘Only problem is, we won’t even be able to see it fifteen minutes from now,’ said Quinn. ‘Anyone got a compass?’
Torrance fished Piggott’s compass out of his pack and tossed it to the Australian, who caught it, quickly taking a sighting on the island up ahead while there was still enough light in the sky to make it out. ‘I’d better take the tiller from here,’ said Quinn.
‘As long as we stay on this heading, we should hit it, right?’ asked Shapiro.
‘Yeah. As long as the ocean currents around here aren’t too strong!’
Twenty-five minutes later the sampan was chugging its way through darkness, though the fires of Pulau Bukum lit up the night, silhouetting Pulau Blakang Mati with their infernal glow. Quinn throttled back while Rossi crouched in the prow, keeping a sharp eye out for reefs. ‘I see breakers!’ he called softly to Quinn.
‘Whereaway?’
‘Eh?’
‘Which direction?’
‘Oh. Off to our reet.’
‘He means to starboard,’ said Torrance.
‘Thanks for the clarification, Barnacle Bill,’ Quinn said sarcastically. ‘I know what “right” means. Anything to port?’
Rossi turned his head. ‘Nothing I can see.’
‘I reckon that must be Pulau Berdayung to our right, then. From looking at the map, there should be a jetty on the western side. I guess that’s where we’ll find Killigrew and the sultan, if they’re still here.’
‘And Yashiro and his men, if they got here ahead of us,’ said Hamilton. ‘May I suggest we land on the eastern shore? Then two of you can make a reconnaissance to assess the lie of the land while the rest of us wait by the boat. If it is a trap, there’s no sense in us all walking into it.’
‘That island’s too small,’ said Torrance. ‘If there are Japs on it, they’re gonna hear our motor whichever way we come. Trying to land discreetly on the east side will just give them time to see who we are and get ready for us. And if they decide to cut and run with Kitty and the sultan as prisoners, chances are whatever vessel they’ve used to reach this island, it can outrun this one. So whatever else we do, first we’ve got to cut off their escape.’
‘You have a better suggestion?’
‘Yeah: we go straight in on the west side and sail right up to the jetty as if we have nothing to hide. It’s the last thing they’ll expect.’
‘If we’re going for the last-thing-they’d-expect effect, should we no’ attack disguised as Hottentots wi’ daffodils stuck up arses?’ asked Rossi.
Torrance grinned. ‘I thought of that, but where will we get the daffodils?’
‘What d’you reckon, skipper?’ Quinn asked Hamilton. ‘Quietly round the east coast, or charge into the valley of death on the west?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t fault the corporal’s logic,’ said Hamilton.
‘Valley of death it is, then.’ Quinn put the tiller over and they chugged around the north end of the island. In the orange glow from Pulau Bukum, they saw the lambo at once. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘There’s no earthly reason for a boat to be tied up at Pulau Berdayung,’ said Hamilton.
‘Want me to throttle back?’ asked Quinn.
‘No,’ said Torrance. ‘If it is Japs, that’ll only make ’em suspicious. Full ahead, as if we’ve every right in the world to be visiting this island and no reason to fear another vessel moored to the jetty. Maybe they’ll take us for Malay smugglers or something. Solly, you get in the prow with the Bren. The rest of you, make sure your tommy guns are cocked with the safeties off. Hold your fire till I give the order, unless they start shooting first. Then let ’em have it.’
Torrance’s palms were wet with sweat where he gripped his Thompson, his mouth as dry as a pharaoh’s sock. His guts churned and his heart pounded in his ribcage, yet he also felt oddly excited, as if he was enjoying this and he could not wait to ‘get tore intae the Jap bastards’, as Rossi might have put it.
Varma suddenly took off his shirt and turban and made his way to where Quinn sat in the stern, the only one aboard who was not concealed in the shadows beneath the awning. ‘Let me take the tiller.’
‘You know how to handle a boat?’
‘Yes of course, you bloody idiot!’
‘D
o as he says,’ Torrance hissed at Quinn, impressed by Varma’s quick thinking. When they saw the Indian’s dark face and torso, they would probably mistake him for a native and be less likely to think the sampan presented any kind of threat.
Quinn let Varma take the tiller and crawled under the awning with the others.
Torrance glanced towards the island on their left. In the firelight from Bukum he could make out an octagonal building on the island’s highest point, a Chinese roof, a temple perhaps. There was a dim glow within, perhaps someone up there.
As the sampan drew closer to where the lambo was moored, Torrance saw figures moving about on deck. One was silhouetted against the side of the deckhouse and there was no mistaking the outline of his domed steel helmet. That was confirmed by a shout from the deckhouse, clearly directed at the approaching sampan. Torrance did not understand a word of it, but the questioning tone spoke for itself: challenging, but with a note of uncertainty.
Torrance sensed the restlessness of his comrades: they would be wrestling in the twilight between nervousness and eagerness just as he was. ‘Remember, they can’t see our faces in this light,’ he said with a confidence he was far from feeling. ‘They can’t work out if we’re English, Malay or fellow Japs and, until they know for sure, they’ll be reluctant to open fire.’
‘Are we up to this?’ asked Rossi.
‘Will you stop asking that?’ muttered Torrance. ‘We’d bloody better be up to it, because there’s no one else around to do it for us.’
Hamilton cleared his throat. ‘At times like this, I always draw strength from the prime minister’s favourite catchphrase.’
‘“Action this day”?’ asked Varma.
‘“Keep buggering on”,’ said Hamilton.
Frowning in the darkness, Torrance thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.
The lambo was moored on the far side of the jetty. Now they were close enough to make out the motorboat moored at the foot of the ladder. ‘Can you bring us around to port, bring us alongside that motorboat?’ he asked Varma. Climbing across the motorboat and up the ladder would take precious seconds, but it would be a lot easier than coming to against the far side of the lambo, where anyone on deck could simply pull the pin out of a grenade and drop it in their bilges with fatal results.
Torrance: Escape from Singapore Page 28