Wesu came in, grinning.
‘Can you get it back into the water?’ she said to him.
‘Yes, missus. But first you take kai-kai. Then Wesu helpim you.’
Later that afternoon Wesu led the young men of his village through the jungle and back to the boathouse. They had with them strong ropes made from liana vine to drag the launch back down to the beach. By dusk, the Shamrock drifted in the shallow waters of the lagoon.
Corrigan and Rachel stood side by side on the beach. Wesu's men held her steady, brown bodies glistening and slick with seawater.
Rachel looked up at Corrigan, expecting as grin. Instead his face was drawn tight. He swayed on his feet and reached for her shoulder with his good arm, to keep himself from falling.
‘Corrigan . . .?’
The spasm passed and he pushed himself away from her.
‘Hold on,’ she whispered to him. ‘We'll make it.’
‘We'll wait until nightfall,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘Then I'll plot a course south-west for Moresby.’
She watched him wade through the water and climb aboard the Shamrock. She felt a terrible sense of dread. She couldn’t imagine surviving all of this if he didn’t make it out with her. What would be the point of that?
Chapter 68
First Lieutenant Mashita Tashiro carefully removed his father's sword from its sheath and held it in front of his eyes. His face was reflected in the polished steel, distorted by the curve of the blade. He stood this way for a long time before slowly replacing it in the lacquered scabbard and laying it reverently on the tatami mat. He placed his ceremonial short sword beside it.
He undressed slowly, removing his boots first, then his tunic and trousers, folding his uniform neatly on the bed. He removed the one thousand stitch waistband last, rolling it around the fist of his left hand and placing it on the table beside the bed.
Then he picked up the incense holder, removed the black sandalwood stopper and placed a stick of incense inside it. He lit it.
Clad only in his shorts, he knelt down on the bamboo mat and looked up at the framed photograph of the Emperor beside the bed.
He inclined his head in prayer.
Nakamura's words echoed around his head, like the rifle shots that afternoon in the gorge. ‘You have disgraced yourself. You have utterly failed in your duty! A handful of English bandits and you lose half of your men and allow them to escape you once more! You have brought shame upon me and upon your regiment!’
Tashiro flinched at the memory.
He picked up the short sword, took a deep breath and then, gripping the long rope-bound handle, he held the point against his stomach.
Sweat ran in tiny rivulets down his body. He thought about crisp summer mornings in the mountains, when he and his brothers went to tend the charcoal kiln.
It was the time of the Bon festival dances. The men would strut about the wooden stage in their kimonos and then join the women and dance in a circle to the steady beat of the drums. In a dreamy, faraway voice he began to murmur the words of a song he had learned as a youth:
The only ones who aren't dancing tonight are the old stone Buddha and me.
He exhaled slowly, let the razor tip of the sword part the tight skin of his abdomen. A small trickle of blood snaked down his groin, staining his shorts.
The muscles of his arms contracted, rippling on his bronzed skin. He clenched his jaw muscles, tensing his whole body. His arms jerked inwards. As the blade penetrated his body his eyes bulged. He caught the scream in his mouth so that his cheeks bulged like small pink balloons.
His left hand pushed against his right fist, drawing the sword across his abdomen. The slick grey of his intestines popped and oozed through the scarlet gash in his stomach. A vapour of steam drifted from the entrails as they oozed onto the mat in front of him.
Tashiro did not look down. His eyes were fixed on some distant future, or more glorious past. A spray of blood spurted from the wound, signaling the end of the deadly act. Tashiro's fist loosened its grip.
The trembling of his limbs was uncontrollable, and the scream in his throat erupted little by little through clenched teeth, an unearthly, high-pitched keening.
Mashita Tashiro, son of a Samurai, fell sideways, his knees drawing themselves up to his chest. His body contorted twice, writhing amongst its own innards, and then he subsided into the soft, slow dance of death, and waited for the night to come.
*****
It was morning. The mountains of Santa Ysabel stood in dark silhouette against the backdrop of cloud. Corrigan stood at the wheel of the Shamrock, looking east. Manning came to stand beside him.
‘Feeling better?’ Corrigan asked.
‘A little. Not as rough now, thank God.’
There had been a heavy swell the previous night and the pitching of the boat had even sent Hogan and Foster scrambling for the side. Rachel had been worst affected and now lay exhausted in the shade of the deckhouse.
‘Where are we?’ Manning said.
‘We're in The Slot, west of Santa Ysabel. We're probably only a hundred miles from Guadalcanal.’
‘What's our chances, Patrick?’
‘They were never very good. They haven't got any worse.’
Rachel opened her eyes and groaned. Manning crouched down next to her. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Awful.’
‘Cabin boy will be around in a minute with some bacon and eggs,’ Corrigan said.
‘That isn't funny, Patrick.’
Manning helped her to her feet. She swayed against the rolling of the launch, her fingers white around the guardrail. ‘Where are we?’
‘The current's carrying us south. If we don't meet anyone on the way, we'll pass to the west of Guadalcanal Island some time tomorrow night. But someone's bound to see us. We're sailing right into the middle of the biggest battle the South Pacific's ever seen.’
‘We can only hope the Americans see us first,’ Manning said.
Rachel looked at Corrigan. It was clear he was keeping himself going now by willpower alone. His eyes were too bright, and the skin was drawn tight across the bones of his face, shiny as wax.
‘Patrick?’ She touched his cheek. He was fever-hot.
‘We have to get you to a hospital.’
‘Agreed. Call an ambulance, will you?’
Rachel put her cheek on Corrigan's shoulder. ‘You can't die. I love you, Patrick.’
‘Now that's the damnedest thing I ever heard. You must have got too much sun.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Just as well things have turned out like they have, then. A leopard doesn't change its spots, girl. A year with me and you'd be sticking me with a knife too. If I was still around.’
‘I'm sorry,’ she said, and laid a hand on his arm. ‘If it wasn't for me none of this would have happened. You could have got away.’
‘Well, at least you finally realize that. You can carve it on my headstone.’
‘Are you sorry?’
Corrigan scowled. ‘Yes.’
‘I don't believe you.’ She grabbed his hair and kissed him hard on the lips. Hogan and Foster looked away; Manning gaped in utter astonishment.
‘You're a terrible judge of character,’ Corrigan whispered as she pulled away.
‘Listen,’ Manning said.
‘A plane,’ Hogan said.
Corrigan pulled away from Rachel and switched off the engines. They all listened. For a few moments there was only the slap of the swell against the hull; but then it came again, the throb of aeroplane engines, rising and fading in circadian rhythm. It grew gradually louder. Corrigan saw it first, pointing to the north-east.
‘There!’
Just a tiny speck in the sky, outlined against the powdery white banks of cumulus over Ysabel. As it got closer Manning made out the familiar silhouette of a flying boat.
‘It’s a Betty,’ he said. ‘Japs.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Afraid so, old boy. I've
been spotting the damn things every day for six months.’
‘Looks like they've seen us too,’ Hogan grunted.
‘We’re screwed,’ Corrigan said.
Chapter 69
Wing Commander James Mitchell was about to turn for home when he saw the flying boat, low in the sky to the west. Fatigue had almost caused him to miss it. He had taken off from Henderson Field at first light that morning on a routine patrol, looking for enemy movement in the Slot. He had found nothing.
Here was a consolation prize.
He dipped his port wing and started to dive. The sun would be directly behind him. It would be an easy kill.
*****
The Betty made one low pass, so low that Rachel felt that she could have reached up and touched the wings. They came in so low she saw the machine gunner in the Perspex bubble in the nose, saw him pointing, his face mask flapping against his leather jacket.
Then its shadow passed over them and it roared on towards the west. For one crazy moment she thought it was going to ignore them. Perhaps the pilot thought they were too inconsequential to bother with.
But then, inexorably, the Betty began its turn, banking to starboard and returning in a wide arc, the red sun painted on its fuselage vivid against the steel grey metal. Rachel was not afraid; there was only this numbing bitterness.
We've come too far to die this way.
‘Into the water!’ Corrigan screamed. ‘Get into the water!’
Corrigan grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the port gunwale. He threw her over the side. When she surfaced, she saw Manning and Hogan leap into the water beside her. Corrigan was still struggling with Foster, who was firing off single rounds at the oncoming plane with his rifle.
Corrigan was shouting at him; she could see his mouth working but the roar of the flying boat engines drowned out every other sound. Corrigan wrenched the rifle from Foster’s hands and dragged him towards the side of the boat.
There was another sound, harsh and staccato; the Betty’s forward machine gun. Corrigan pulled Foster over the side as bullets splintered the deck of the Shamrock. The second burst ignited the fuel tanks. She exploded in a sudden rush of heat and cracking timber, was instantly consumed by a ball of orange flame. A plume of choking black smoke mushroomed into the sky and when Rachel looked back, the Shamrock was gone.
Corrigan surfaced beside her.
‘Are you all right?’ he gasped.
‘I'm okay. Where are the others?’
Foster had drifted about fifty yards away. Manning was slapping ineffectually at the water as Hogan fought to keep his head above the waves.
‘I can't swim,’ Manning shouted.
Rachel grabbed Corrigan’s arm and pointed to the east. The Japanese were coming back for them.
*****
Mitchell was still a mile away when he saw the stricken launch. He watched the Betty make its second pass, saw the Shamrock explode into flames.
‘What the hell is that?’ Mitchell said aloud.
The Betty was banking and getting ready to make another pass. He guessed the survivors were in the water and the Japanese planned to strafe them. ‘No you don't, you son of a bitch.’ He dropped the flaps on the Wildcat and started his dive.
He was wrong about the Japanese pilot. He thought he would not see him coming out of the sun, but when Mitchell was about a quarter of a mile away he saw him gesticulating wildly out of his cockpit window. He pulled the flying boat into a tight turn to port, to try and make a smaller target.
The wing stem of the Betty filled the cross-hairs of his target finder. The Grumman shuddered as he fired the first burst from the 8mm cannons on the wingtips.
*****
‘Get ready to dive!’ Corrigan shouted to Rachel.
She took a deep breath, summoning her strength for one massive effort. But at the last moment the Japanese pilot altered his course, pulling the nose up so sharply she thought it would stall.
‘What's he doing?’ she screamed.
Corrigan pointed and then she saw it too; a flicker of silver appeared through the drifting plume of black smoke from the Shamrock.
The gunner in the cockpit high amidships of the Betty got away one short wild burst before the Grumman's wing cannons ripped his plane apart. Almost stalled in mid-air, she presented an inviting target. Pieces of fabric and steel flew away from the port wing; the forward machine gunner writhed like a marionette and his Perspex bubble was sprayed with blood.
More shells tore open the fuselage and the cockpit and then one of the Grumman's fifty calibre shells exploded the Betty's fuel tank. Even from four hundred yards away Rachel could feel the searing heat of the explosion as the plane vaporized in mid-air.
Wreckage splashed into the water around them. One of the Kasei engines landed in the water just fifty yards away.
Then the Grumman was overhead, its wingtips skimming the surface of the waves. Rachel watched it make a slow climbing turn and come back.
She raised one hand out of the water and waved.
*****
James Mitchell looked out of the cockpit, and frowned. At first he assumed the Japanese had been attacking a PBY torpedo boat. He had not expected to see a civilian launch this deep into the war zone.
As he buzzed the water a second time he remembered the rescue party that had disappeared on Santa Maria just a few days before. ‘Jesus, it can't be,’ he said but he reached for his mask intercom and called in his position to Henderson Field.
‘Get a PBY out here as soon as you can,’ he said. ‘Looks like we've got some Coastwatchers in the water.’
*****
By the time the PBY appeared on the horizon Mitchell calculated he had only thirty minutes' fuel left in the tanks, barely enough to get him back to Henderson Field. He continued to circle the four people in the water, watching with rage and frustration as the first dark, lithe silhouette sliced through the green waters of the ocean towards them.
Soon it was joined by a second, then a third. He looked towards the white moustache of the PBY's bow wave and silently urged them to hurry.
Then dipping his wings once, he turned south-east and in minutes he had disappeared over the horizon.
Chapter 70
Corrigan did not have such a clear view of the shark pack, but he knew they were there. He saw something moving in the water, and then a dorsal fin broke the surface, close by. They were unpredictable killers; they might circle for a few more minutes or a few hours, but they would come.
Hogan was getting weaker, the effort of keeping Manning afloat had almost spent him; Corrigan too was at the point of surrender. His left arm was stiff and useless. He was fighting just to stay conscious. Twice his head dipped below the waves and he almost surrendered.
It was Rachel who kept him going, grabbing a fistful of hair and forcing his head back to the surface. ‘You can't die!’ she screamed at him. ‘I won't let you die!’
It was then he saw the PBY, a dark shape on the horizon. He could just make out the white fleck of the bow wave and the tall, thin lines of the bridge.
Then something bumped him very hard, in his side. He twisted around, startled, and saw the sunlight glitter on the dorsal fin of one of the sharks before it dived out of sight.
It had been a dry run. The next time it would come with its jaws gaping, and there was nothing he could do.
Foster was the first to reach the PBY and he was hauled onto the deck. The American commander maneuvered his craft towards Hogan and Manning. The big seaman, although exhausted, pushed Manning ahead of him and two of the crew pulled him from the sea.
Hogan dog-paddled in the water, waiting his turn. They took seconds too long.
He didn't even see it; it took him from below. He didn’t even scream. Moments later he was gone.
A few seconds later Hogan - or what was left of him, the torso and the stump of an arm with ‘Mother’ tattooed on the forearm - surfaced on the water a hundred yards away. The water turned into a bloo
dy, bubbling cauldron as more sharks closed in, snapping over the morsels.
Corrigan and Rachel had reached the PBY.
He summoned the last of his strength and his will to grasp her under the arm and lift her half out of the water. The sailors crowded at the side of the patrol boat hauled her up onto the deck. Rachel screamed, her hands reaching out for Corrigan. The crew were yelling. The two sailors manning the machine gun at the bow loosed off round after round into the churning water in an effort to stave off the pack.
‘Corrigan!’ Rachel screamed.
Another sailor leaned right out over the side and reached for Corrigan's one good arm. The water seemed to boil as another shark flashed along the port side and came for Corrigan, its slit mouth gaping, rows of needle sharp teeth exposed.
Epilogue
September 1944
Cormorants swooped over the ocean, hunting fish. Breakers frothed over the reef. Mitchell closed his eyes. It was all so different now; hard to remember that two thousand Japanese had died on this island, impossible to imagine this quiet lagoon as it had been when the Americans landed that morning, pouring onto the white beach while the sand erupted around them under a barrage of bullets and shrapnel.
The rusting landing craft abandoned along the shore looked almost benign, just flotsam like the green coconut shells; the fecund jungle was fresh and green among the blackened stumps of the blasted palm trees. The war had moved on. Just the Cargo remained.
The ferry nudged the jetty and he stepped off and made his way along the creaking wooden planks towards the settlement. He walked slowly, nursing the three broken ribs and shattered knee that were his legacy from jumping out of his burning plane over Rabaul. He had spent two days in a rubber raft, tormented by this same sun that now seemed so benign.
He was in no hurry to go back to war. They were winning now. He had seen enough of death.
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