by Damien Lewis
Though marooned and doomed, the Grasshopper still made an excellent and stable fire platform—or at least she would until her aft magazine was caught by the flames and blew. Sure enough, under the protective hail of bullets thrown up from the stricken ship, the lifeboat and the Carley floats made landfall pretty much unharmed.
When the signal was finally given that all had made shore safely, the Grasshopper’s guns fell silent. Those few remaining aboard ship—in the gun positions and on the bridge—made a dash for the sea and the short swim to the shallows. But as Petty Officer White cast a final look around the stricken ship, he was unable to find one very special crew member—Judy. Amid the hell of battle, the Grasshopper’s dog and ever-faithful mascot seemed to have disappeared.
Presuming Judy must have made her own way to land, White launched himself into the sea and swam ashore.
Chapter Nine
Even as the last of the Grasshopper’s crew dived into the warm sea, the final moments of Britain’s island fortress were playing out. Within hours Singapore would fall in the largest surrender of a British-led military force in history. Some 80,000 British, Australian, Indian, and other Allied service personnel would be taken as Japanese prisoners of war in what Churchill would describe as the “worst disaster” in British military history.
Just as February 15, 1942, was one of Britain’s darkest hours, so too the fate of the survivors of the Grasshopper was proving decidedly bleak. Five of the crew members were reported dead, four were severely wounded, and there were several, both military and civilians, reported missing. Many of the survivors were in shock. Their situation on this unknown island appeared dire indeed. They had few possessions, no medical supplies, little food, and no visible sign of fresh water.
At the same time it was obvious that Japanese forces were swarming all around these islands. The first priority was to get the wounded into proper cover, where they could be hidden from view and whatever treatment possible might be given them. Commander Hoffman might have lost his ship, but he was still in charge of his crew, and he did a rapid assessment of who and what he had available to him.
In addition to some fifty-odd ship’s crew, he had a handful of Australian nurses: they should prove useful caring for the wounded. There were six Royal Marines in his company, themselves survivors of the recent sinking of the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales. He set the marines the task most suited to them—to scour the length and breadth of the island, searching for fresh water, any local inhabitants, or survivors from the other ships.
He also had any number of women and children somehow to comfort and care for. One of the women was blind, and she was constantly being tended to by her daughter. The welfare of the civilians had to be one of his first priorities, after the wounded. Commander Hoffman set the ship’s crew the task of clearing a camp where the beach met the jungle. Rough stretchers were lashed together from tree branches, and the wounded were laid in the shade on them. Next, graves were dug in the sandy soil, and the dead, such as they’d been able to bring ashore, were buried.
Later that afternoon the marines returned from their search with bleak news. As far as they could tell the island was uninhabited. They’d found little evidence of any other survivors, and worse still, there was no sign of any drinking water. This was now Commander Hoffman’s chief concern. On the open beach the sun was blistering, and even under the shade of the trees it was suffocating and humid. They desperately needed water, especially if the wounded were to rehydrate after losing so much blood.
Commander Hoffman turned his gaze toward the Grasshopper. The tide was farther out now, leaving the beached ship lying high and at an odd angle to the sea. Smoke still roiled about her aft deck from the fire. The odd explosion echoed across the water as the flames caught on something more inflammable. There was no knowing what risks they would be exposed to if they returned to the ship, but unless they did, many of those in his company would surely die.
Hoffman glanced at a figure beside him—Petty Officer White, the Grasshopper’s hardy coxswain. He gave a nod toward the ship. “Cox’n, when the lifeboat returns I want you to get back aboard the Grasshopper. Take some hands with you and see what, if anything, can be salvaged. Priority has to be water, medical supplies, food, clothes, and some bedding.”
It was White’s turn to eye the ship. The lifeboat had been sent off to circumnavigate the island, doing a more thorough search for any survivors. It could be any amount of time before it returned—time that the wounded could ill afford.
“Permission to go now, sir,” White volunteered. “It’s only a short swim, and I can knock up a raft once aboard.”
“Very well, Cox’n. As soon as you like.”
The captain of the Grasshopper hadn’t been the slightest bit surprised at Coxswain White’s suggestion. He would have been more shocked if White hadn’t volunteered to go. But at the same time he didn’t doubt the man’s bravery. In addition to the dangers of returning to the burning ship, sharks had been sighted circling the wreck, no doubt drawn to it by the bodies that had ended up in the water.
Undaunted, White strode purposefully into the sea and set out for the vessel. He was doing all he could to keep his mind focused on the task ahead of him, but his thoughts kept drifting to what might be lurking under the water. Did sharks always swim with their dorsal fins poking out when approaching their prey? Or might they sneak in unseen at depth and strike from below, going for the legs?
By the time he’d reached the ship, he was sure that he’d broken the world record for the fifty-yard dash! He hauled himself up one side of the vessel, which had heeled over considerably as the tide receded. His first task now was to construct a raft so he could use it to ferry any salvage to shore. Both the bridge and the wheelhouse had a deck grating—a tough wooden latticework that lay across the floor—and that should make the perfect platform for a raft.
He dragged them into the open air, lashed them together one on top of the other, then manhandled them over the ship’s side. He now had a usable floating platform, which he lashed to the ship’s rail with a length of rope. That done, White eased himself into what had once been the officers’ quarters, set forward of the ship. This was still mostly above water and dry. He grabbed bedding, pots and pans, and as much canned food as he could lay his hands on. Each item was pushed up through the hatch and piled on the deck above. As an extra bonus he found an unbroken bottle of whiskey.
“For medicinal purposes only,” he told himself as he placed it with the growing pile of salvage.
He moved farther toward the ship’s main mess deck. White was careful going down the steel rungs of the ladder, for the sea had flooded into this part of the vessel and the water was soon up to his waist. He inched into the gloom, nudging his way past tables and chairs that bobbed about in the oily darkness, searching with his hands for anything that might prove useful.
The farther into the far corners he went, the darker it became, until he was finding his way about largely by feel alone. It was then that he froze. Faintly, he’d caught the most unexpected and worrying of sounds. At first White told himself that his ears had to be playing tricks on him, but as he strained to hear, he caught the noise again. From ahead of him in the eerie gloom came the distinct and uncanny suggestion of groaning.
It was such an unexpected noise to have detected down there in the bowels of a ghost ship run aground at sea. There it was again—part groan and part whine. It sounded almost like a young child crying. It sent shivers up his spine. It was almost as if someone—some being—had been left behind here in the flooded mess deck, somehow trapped and in great distress. Or was it maybe the spirits of those who had died down here come to haunt the doomed ship already.
White turned around in the sloshing water, his ears straining to track the ghostly noise. As far as he could tell it seemed to be coming from beneath an overturned set of metal lockers. Using the bulkhead as his guide, he traced his way around with his hands held out before him, his hear
t beating like a machine gun inside his chest. He caught himself holding his breath: Who—or what—could it be?
White approached the chaos of the overturned lockers, water bumping against their hollow sides as he moved closer. Thump, thump, thump—the water beat against the steel drawers like a drum. The whining kept growing in intensity—almost as if someone was calling to him. There was no doubt in his mind now: behind those upturned lockers was a living presence, one that was somehow still alive amid the darkness and the flooded chaos.
White felt a rush of fear mixed with adrenaline similar to that which he’d experienced as he’d made his mad dash through the shark-infested waters to get to the ship. He inched closer, his bone-white hand reaching ahead to feel behind the upturned lockers. He stretched farther into the darkness. For an instant he could feel nothing—certainly no living being—and then his fingertips made contact with . . . a clump of wet and soggy hair.
But this wasn’t like any human hair he’d ever felt before. An instant later a cold and damp nose had found his hand, and White knew in a flash who he had discovered here.
“Judy! Judy!” he exclaimed joyously. “You silly bitch! Why didn’t you bark for me?”
Amid all the confusion and shock of the attack and the escape, the officers and crew of the Grasshopper had lost track of their dog. White had presumed she was off scouring the island with the search party or maybe in the lifeboat looking farther afield. It had never occurred to him that their beloved ship’s dog might be still aboard the stricken vessel and trapped. Had the captain not ordered White to search for salvage, this would surely have proved to be her watery grave.
With murmured words of comfort he lifted the first of the heavy lockers off her, and shortly Judy was free. Fearing the worst, he gathered the sodden dog in his arms and waded toward the steps, all the while muttering words of remonstration—“Why didn’t you bark for us?”—plus words of reassurance in her ear. Once on the deck he laid her down carefully so he could go about assessing her injuries.
Holding her still with the one hand, he felt all along her legs and body for breakages. As he did so, Judy seemed to be giving him this look out of the corner of her eye—Thanks for the rescue, but what on earth are you up to now? Finally, he allowed her to go free. He watched worriedly as she climbed to her feet. He was half expecting her to stumble painfully as a broken foot or leg gave way.
Instead, Judy proceeded to shake herself from head to tail, a dog shower of seawater raining down across her rescuer. And then she took one stiff-legged leap to the left and one to the right, with her head down as if ready for play!
The next moment she had plunked herself down at White’s feet and was licking his hand. He shook his head in amazement. Not knowing quite whether to laugh or to curse, he opted to do both before yelling out the good news toward the shore.
“Judy! I’ve found Judy! She’s here on the ship!”
With Judy’s help he scoured the remainder of the vessel. By the end of their search they had a large pile of all types of swag heaped up on the deck. White took several minutes loading as much as he could aboard the floating platform, and last of all he lifted the ship’s dog onto the rickety craft. It proved heavy and unwieldy, and unsurprisingly it took all of his seamanship to steer the overloaded raft away from the ship.
Judy meanwhile was up on four paws, peering over the edge. Something in the water had her transfixed. Moments later she began to bark wildly, as if she were warning of a new flight of Japanese warplanes inbound—only now she had her eyes fixed on something deep below. Then, with an extra powerful yelp of warning, Judy launched herself off the raft and into the sea.
White didn’t have much of a clue what she was up to, and in any case he needed all of his concentration to guide the low-lying craft toward the beach. Judy meanwhile was swimming strongly, doing laps of the raft as if she was circling it protectively. Only once strong hands had joined White in guiding the clumsy craft into the shallows did Judy stop what she was doing and haul herself onto dry land.
Then she did her second shake of the morning—head to tail and showering all her friends with seawater—before unleashing one last protective round of barks toward the sea. White hadn’t liked to dwell on it too much as he’d made his way across the water, but he suspected very much that Judy’s extraordinary sense for danger had detected a shark in the water. Just as she’d gone into action at Hankow to safeguard Chief Petty Officer Jefferey from a forest leopard, she’d dived into the waters off this tropical island to distract a shark from its intended human prey.
Having recruited further hands to help pilot the raft and fend off any marauding sharks, White began to ferry the rest of the salvage from ship to shore. As the pile of stores grew, the immediate issue of food had been resolved. The chief problem now remained water, for the little they’d managed to salvage off the Grasshopper wouldn’t last long. The ship’s crew had scoured the island from end to end, but not the smallest stream or spring seemed to grace this otherwise picture-perfect tropical paradise setting.
As the ship’s crew continued to poke around, digging shallow holes in the dankest parts of the forest and otherwise investigating anywhere that seemed to possess even the vaguest promise of water, Judy joined them. She had a general sniff around. She trotted from figure to figure, tail wagging busily and tongue hanging out as she endeavored to cool herself in the late afternoon swelter.
But much as everyone tried to explain to her what they were doing—“We’re looking for water, see”—Judy didn’t quite seem to get it. She kept finding her way back to the sea, where she’d have a good splash and a roll in the surf. Like her human companions, Judy was doubtless feeling hot and bothered, not to mention thirsty, and a good dip was as good a way as any to cool off. The ship’s crew kept calling her back to help in the search for water, but she seemed fixated on this one stretch of shoreline.
The rough, makeshift camp that had been hewn out of the jungle was already starting to resemble some kind of frontline field hospital. Using the medical supplies salvaged from the Grasshopper, the Australian nurses were tending to the wounded as best they could—bandaging up breaks, cleaning and disinfecting wounds, and doling out the precious painkillers. But without water there was a limit to what they could achieve.
Where the camp met the beach the marines were busy constructing a bush stove—one with which they would be able to cook, but without the telltale smoke that an open fire gives off. One of the marines was struck by how Judy kept returning to the exact same patch of sand, right beside the water. She’d make her way there, whine and paw at the ground, then bark excitedly—as if trying to attract the attention of her human companions.
The marine called over to a member of the Grasshopper’s crew. “What’s up with your dog, chief? Can she see something down there we can’t?”
The sailor wandered over to join Judy. There was no doubt about it—her behavior was curious. He knelt beside her, giving her a good scratch behind the ears where he knew she liked it best.
“What’s up then, old girl?”
In answer, Judy gave an eager whine, and then she began to dig. With her forepaws flying she scooped away at the wet sand, which went blasting out behind her. Caught up in the dog’s apparent enthusiasm, the mystified sailor joined her in her excavations. All of a sudden, there was a gurgling at the bottom of the hole and a stream of clear water bubbled up from below.
It looked for all the world like a spring.
The sailor couldn’t believe it. He bent, scooped with an eager hand, and drank. It was fresh and sweet. He turned and yelled up the beach.
“Water! Water! Judy’s found water!”
What Judy had demonstrated here were two of the most unique and extraordinary aspects of canine behavior. One is intelligent disobedience—the ability to hear a human’s command or request and to ignore it because the dog knows better. Judy had heard the Grasshopper’s crew urging her to join the hunt for water in the forest, but she had other
—and as it turned out better—ideas. The second is the dog’s sixth sense.
So often—as Judy had just demonstrated—dogs appear able to read our minds. They seem to have the gift of anticipating our next move and guessing how we are feeling. In the most extreme cases, they’ve been known to foresee earthquakes, the approach of a violent storm, or even the death of a human companion. The most sensitive canine noses—like a pointer’s—can detect human pheromones, and so they may well be able to smell our moods.
Had Judy read the body language of the ship’s crew—which to her meant digging for something of vital importance—combined that with smelling their thirsty urgency, and set off to find what they were so desperately seeking? It certainly looked that way. Most likely she had heard the spring running beneath the sand or smelled the fresh water. Either way, her sixth sense had led her to understand what her human family needed and then go and find it.
With the problem of food and now—thanks to their wonder dog—water being solved, the most pressing issue had become the wounded. The lifeboat from the Dragonfly had reached them, guided to the makeshift camp by the burning wreck of Grasshopper. It was riddled with bullet holes from where the Japanese warplanes had strafed it, and few of those aboard had escaped injury. Only those seated at the very front of the vessel—the opposite end from the direction in which the aircraft had attacked—had avoided being hit.
The dead had been put overboard, for the badly holed boat had been barely able to carry those still living. Leading Stoker Les Searle—wounded already in the battle for Singapore and comforted by Judy in that island fortress’s hospital—was one of the most senior surviving personnel aboard the Dragonfly’s lifeboat. He gave an account as best he could to Commander Hoffman of all that had happened, including that the Dragonfly’s captain, Commander Sprott, and his first lieutenant were most likely dead.