Another voice, Tam’s, quickly translated and Stevenson saw the door of his cabin opened a crack. A torrent of Vietnamese poured down from the bridge above and when it was over Tam’s disembodied voice, speaking in English, filled the air.
‘He says how can we trust you? You can tell us anything.’
‘He’s going to have to trust me,’ snapped Mackinnon truculently, stepping forward, but an explosion of sparks and splinters burst like a small bomb at his feet where Phan’s slugs cut up the composition of the decking.
Mackinnon danced backwards. Stevenson had got to his feet and crept aft. He could see Mackinnon round the stairs pressed back clear of Phan’s line of fire. Phan remained out of sight to Stevenson. The movement caught Mackinnon’s eye as he recovered from the gunfire.
‘Look here,’ he had begun and Stevenson mouthed and gestured for him to keep talking. ‘Look here,’ Mackinnon went on, ‘stop this shooting at once. You have the gun and I must negotiate with you.’ Mackinnon turned to the girl whose face he could just see peeping through the slit in Stevenson’s cabin door. ‘Can you explain that to him?’
She nodded and began to translate. To Mackinnon’s relief the translation grew into a dialogue. His heart was hammering uncomfortably in his breast as the full import of exactly what was going on overcame his initial outrage. He was aware that the two Vietnamese he had thought he had disposed of were now behind him. They joined in the row and Mackinnon said in stentorian tones, ‘Will you tell these men, miss, that I, I,’ he repeated the word, tapping his chest for emphasis and aware that their argument was subsiding and they were listening to him, ‘I am taking this ship to Hong Kong. Never mind what you have been told. It is true we were ordered to Shanghai, but now it is all changed.’ He thought fast: ‘Because of the typhoon we cannot go to Shanghai.’ He paused, sensing a lowering of tension. ‘You tell them.’ Perhaps Stevenson’s ploy, whatever it was, would not be needed. Mackinnon wanted to avoid the young man being tempted into foolish heroics, knowing his ancient pistol was no match for the automatic weapon held by the man above.
Stevenson had retreated into the Captain’s cabin. In addition to the door into the officers’ flat and the internal ladder to the chart-room, there was a door leading directly on to the boat-deck. It led out under the ladder to the starboard bridge-wing and Stevenson reached the top of this and lifted his head cautiously above the level of the deck to locate Phan’s exact whereabouts.
To Stevenson’s relief the Vietnamese was half-hidden; standing at the head of the chart-room stairwell, only his back and one elbow could be seen through the open wheelhouse door. Cautiously Stevenson moved upwards. Once on the bridge-wing he could pad swiftly to the door and prod the stub-barrelled revolver into Phan’s ribs. The man would have to relinquish the machine gun and all would be well. He strained his ears to catch Phan’s voice above the noise of the wind. He was still negotiating, saying something in Vietnamese. Stevenson hesitated, thinking he heard Tam’s voice and drawing strength from it.
He gathered himself for the final move, his right leg bent under him, the other ready to launch himself forward.
‘Gotcha!’
Macgregor’s hand closed round his left ankle, but Stevenson was already moving off the top of the ladder. With one leg trapped he fell full length and the pistol flew from his hand. He barked his shin on the lip of the bridge-deck and then suddenly Macgregor let go of his ankle and leapt up behind him. To his horror, Stevenson found the Able Seaman standing over him brandishing a fire axe.
‘Now you bastard . . .’
Fighting for his life, convinced Macgregor was out of his mind, Stevenson twisted violently to one side. Macgregor had seen the gun slide across the deck and hesitated, unsure whether to commit himself to an attack on the Second Mate with the fire axe, an attack that to succeed could only have one outcome, or whether to try for the abandoned revolver.
Action without much fear of the consequences had been a watchword of Macgregor’s uncontrolled and wild childhood, but survival, he had soon learned, often depended upon an escape route. In his many confrontations with authority the early acquired skill of pushing things just so far had stood him in good stead. At times it had deceived his victims into thinking he was resolute. If so it was part of their perception of their own intimidation. Resolution, however, took no notice of consequences; it pursued its ends regardless, taking no note of escape routes, even of self-preservation. It was one of the building blocks of courage, but not part of Able Seaman Macgregor’s make-up.
Stevenson was at his mercy; an unalterable fact which Macgregor paused just long enough to savour. The fire axe, which had seemed so attractive a means of revenge a few minutes earlier, might now be replaced by the revolver, a weapon of greater potential, lethal, but also intimidating. He could kill Stevenson. The axe would make short work of the prone body at his feet, but Macgregor knew the chances of pulling off the complete and irreversible seizure of the ship was unlikely. He was not used to considering himself on the winning side. Oh, he had won skirmish after skirmish, certainly; but never a real battle, never mind a campaign; the winning of a war was beyond his imagination. For this reason, a reason of great cunning, the arrangement he had come to with Phan Van Nui had allowed his part in the seizure of the ship to be kept from his shipmates. He wanted to fuck the girl and get ashore in Hong Kong with a fistful of greenback dollars.
But his thirst for revenge on Stevenson had compromised him. A seed of doubt was germinating in his mind. The axe was too dangerous, the pistol offered a way out. As Stevenson sought to roll out from under the imminent descent of the axe, Macgregor jumped forward towards the gun.
The shout and sounds of a scuffle on the bridge-wing had alarmed Phan Van Nui. He stepped back into the wheelhouse, casting a quick look to his left, out over the starboard bridge-wing. A man was lying on the deck, another had got past him, had an axe in his left hand and was picking up a pistol, pointing it at the wheelhouse . . .
Phan spun round, whipping up the machine gun which had been depressed to cover Mackinnon below him at the foot of the chart-room stairs.
‘No! It’s me . . .’
An orange burst of fire stuttered from its ugly muzzle. Macgregor, his moment of triumph turned in the split second of Phan’s alarm and incomprehension into bloody tragedy, jerked obscenely with the impact of the slugs. Blood seemed to spray out of him as his rent muscles were torn apart, convulsing his body in a last fling.
Stevenson, flat on the deck in a long, attenuated moment of absolute terror, felt the warm splatter of the stuff strike him. Through the teak planks and his own taut and apprehensive nerves, he heard and felt the heavy axe clatter to the deck, and then the unforgettable slump of Macgregor’s body and the long, long rattling exhalation of his last breath.
For a moment Stevenson stared into the wide, staring and sightless eyes. Then with a violent retch, he was sick.
Looking up and watching the effect Tam’s explanation was having on the Vietnamese gunman, Mackinnon was alarmed when the man swung to his left and the air was again split apart by the evil death chatter of the machine gun. Certain that it was Stevenson at whom Phan fired and with no thought for himself, Mackinnon charged up the internal stairs. He was oblivious to the fact that his precipitate movement released the other two Vietnamese bandits from their torpor. His sole consideration was for Stevenson and the horror he might find on the bridge, a horror he was already blaming himself for.
As Phan’s five-second burst ceased with the realisation he had shot Macgregor, he turned back to the others. He was too late. Mackinnon was at the top of the stairs and although Phan rounded on him with a cry and brought the snout of his weapon toward the Captain’s ample belly, Mackinnon crashed into him. Phan fell back, lost his balance and the tall brass column of the engine-room telegraph struck him in the small of the back, winding him badly. As his slight frame bounced forward, Mackinnon drove one fist into Phan’s stomach while the other tore the machine gun from h
is loosening grip.
Staring out of the wheelhouse door Mackinnon saw Stevenson getting to his feet, wiping a dribble from his mouth, his eyes on the inert body sprawled at his feet.
‘Are you all right?’ Mackinnon called in a voice harsh with anxiety, and then, as he took in the whole ghastly scene, asked, ‘Is that Macgregor?’
Stevenson looked up and nodded.
‘Are you all right?’ Mackinnon repeated with more emphasis.
Stevenson pulled himself together. ‘Shaken but not deterred,’ he joked.
Mackinnon smiled. Behind him there was a movement he thought came from Phan Van Nui, the would-be hijacker. He turned, realising his mistake. Phan had not recovered, but his accomplices had the girl between them, her arms pinned back behind her shoulder blades so that the pain made her walk on tiptoes, her mouth stopped by the hand of one of her countrymen. The trio were edging forward into the wheelhouse, working their way round to Phan whose laboured breathing rasped loudly.
Mackinnon raised the machine gun. He had no idea how to use it, but he waved it and snarled, ‘Let her go!’
Above the hand across her mouth, Tam’s eyes were wide with fear. She tried to shake her head, knowing men with machine guns usually used them.
Behind Mackinnon, Stevenson saw what was happening. For a moment his mind was a blank. He thought of the revolver and how he had dropped it, remembered Macgregor had been going to get it when Phan mistakenly shot him, and then saw the dull gleam of the thing almost at his feet with congealing gobbets of Macgregor’s blood across it in a trail that led from his corpse to the eau-de-nil paintwork of the bridge bulwark.
Bending he picked it up. It seemed to jump in his hand, the kick of its recoil shocking his arm. The whine of the ricochetting bullet whanged off forward somewhere. The shot made them all jump. Mackinnon half turned again, Tam was jerked by her nervous captors and Phan, drawing his knees into his agonised stomach in an attempt to stand, slumped down again.
It had all happened very quickly and the situation was resolved by Mackinnon who recovered and reacted first. Realising what had happened, he turned on the hijackers holding Tam. With a quick stride he had closed the gap between them, shoving the muzzle of the machine gun into the ribs of the nearer Vietnamese, and was bodily forcing the trio backwards. The two men lost their nerve. With a strong, cuffing sweep of his powerful left arm, his right still pressing the firearm into the ribs of the right-hand bandit, Mackinnon detached Tam, flinging off her other captor as he roughly slammed the two of them against the flag locker across the rear of the wheelhouse.
Cushioned by the man, Tam was only shaken. Observing Mackinnon’s purpose in separating Tam, Stevenson called, ‘Here! Come here!’
‘Where Chief Officer? Where Dafoo?’ Mackinnon asked harshly of the quailing bandits. The two men shrank back as Mackinnon continued to menace them with the gun. ‘Give me another shot, Alex.’
Gingerly Stevenson pointed the gun upwards and pulled the trigger. A shower of splinters leapt from the teak rail round the monkey island. Involuntarily, he squeezed the trigger again and a second shot rang out. The next moment, pushed out of the wheelhouse on to the port wing, the two Vietnamese suddenly broke and fled, scrambling down the port ladder.
‘Shall I follow them?’ Stevenson called, but Mackinnon shook his head.
‘Leave ’em. Let ’em stew awhile in their own juice. If they’d had a gun they’d have used it. I think we hold all the cards now.’ Mackinnon nodded at Phan. ‘You can tie this bugger’s hands behind his back and secure him to the telegraph.’
‘Where belong Chief Officer?’ Mackinnon turned to Tam and Stevenson. ‘Ask him, will you?’ Mackinnon said as Stevenson found a length of flag halliard and crouched beside Phan. ‘Tell him if anything has happened to them it’ll be the worst for him.’
Tam spoke to Phan and he replied slowly and with some difficulty. Watching, Mackinnon regretted hitting him and felt sorry for the man. His anger waned rapidly now he had control of the ship again. A few moments later Stevenson had released Rawlings and Sparks from their imprisonment.
They appeared somewhat sheepishly in the wheelhouse doorway.
‘Trust you two old ladies to be locked in the lavatory,’ Mackinnon remarked.
‘Have you seen that ship, sir?’ Rawlings riposted, and Mackinnon looked round. Not three miles away, southbound for Singapore, a large container ship thrashed past at speed. It recalled Mackinnon to the present.
‘I suppose we didn’t get stars?’ he asked.
‘No, sir; I’m sorry,’ Rawlings said, pleased old Gorilla had used the first person plural and did not blame him for their lack of a position fix.
Mackinnon grunted. ‘I wonder where the hell we are.’
‘I’ll go and try for a D/F bearing, sir, from Wang Lan,’ volunteered Sparks, equally anxious to wipe out the humiliation of time spent in close proximity to a urinal pan and the nervously perspiring Rawlings.
‘Good idea, Sparks,’ Mackinnon said.
‘I don’t think you’ll find your radio-room in the state you left it,’ Stevenson advised the Radio Officer as he made to go below.
‘Oh, Christ.’ Sparks pulled a face and went down the ladder.
Mackinnon stepped out on to the bridge wing and called Rawlings over.
‘Let’s have this cleared away,’ he ordered, pointing at Macgregor’s bloody body, ‘and this mess hosed down.’
He watched the huge grey ‘box boat’ sweep past. She flew the Panamanian flag, like themselves, but Mackinnon knew she was owned by a taipan’s house in Hong Kong.
‘Looks like the Chinese finally won the opium war,’ he muttered. The sea had gone down and the wind, veering steadily in the wake of the storm, was blowing across the run of the waves so the long hull of the passing vessel lifted and rolled with graceful ease.
Mackinnon caught Tam’s eye. She was standing in the wheelhouse door watching with preoccupied fascination as Braddock and Pritchard lifted Macgregor’s corpse. He realised he had forgotten the forlorn duffle-coated figure isolated at the back of the wheelhouse. He indicated the container ship.
‘Sign of the times,’ he said kindly, aware she had no idea to what he alluded. ‘Alex will look after you,’ he said slowly.
Why had he said that? True, Stevenson had not demurred when Mackinnon had referred to his interest in the girl earlier, but it was not the real reason he had pushed them together. Mackinnon was aware he saw something of himself in Stevenson, and something of Akiko in Tam. He chid himself for his silliness; it was nothing other than an old man’s fancy. Far more likely the girl would get her claws into Stevenson to keep her out of the cages in Hong Kong. He hoped Stevenson was wise enough to see through such a ploy. Anyway, Mackinnon had more important things to think about; he could not marry them, despite what Hollywood thought! He raised his binoculars and swept the horizon ahead of the Matthew Flinders. ‘D’you think there’s the remotest chance of some breakfast?’
It was the old woman who put the idea into Tam’s head. ‘He wants you,’ she had said, ‘take him, he will make a good husband.’
Tam had considered the matter. She dreaded the future and knew what the old woman said made sense, but she had no affection for white men. Her earliest recollections of them were all of horror. They had destroyed the village where she had been born in an inferno of searing heat. The remnant of her family had migrated to the city where the insecurity of survival had broken it up. Since the day she had first known the stench of napalm she had been on the move, a nomad. The tranquillity of those long-ago, childhood memories of village life had goaded her on until, in her search for the unattainable, she had been caught up in the escape in the rotting junk.
‘He’s not an American,’ the old woman had explained, exasperated with Tam’s finer feelings, ‘he’s a strong man, a young man.’ She had sucked her gold teeth and swayed back and forwards. ‘Ah, if I was young again . . .’
Obeying Mackinnon’s order, Stevenson led her
below, aware of her nakedness under the heavy duffle coat which she clasped tightly about her. He must find something for her to wear, he thought, and it was difficult for him to throw off the image of her slender body exposed to Macgregor in the wrecked radio-room.
He opened his cabin door and stood aside for her to enter. Their eyes met and the prickling spur of lust at their sudden concupiscence gave way to an overwhelming pity.
He began to pull open drawers and his hanging cupboard. He found her a coloured shirt, some flip-flops, a sweater and a spare sarong he wore at night.
‘That’s a bit of luck,’ he said, holding it out to her. She took the thin cotton garment, let it fall from its folds and draped it from her waist. As she looked down at herself, her hair fell across her face. Impulsively he put out his hand and stroked the lock away. She raised her head and he caught her chin in his cupped hand. Very slowly he bent to kiss her, but she drew sharply back.
For a moment they confronted each other, Stevenson momentarily affronted by her rejection until his good sense reminded him of the ordeal through which she had just been.
She felt confused, repulsed by his touch, yet moved by his obvious concern. She recalled the old woman’s advice and realised she did not want to take advantage of the man before her. She shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, exuding a deliberate, if forced cheerfulness and returning to practical matters. ‘We will get you some proper clothes when we get to Hong Kong.’
‘Hong Kong?’ she queried, still suspicious. ‘Captain say Hong Kong but . . .’
‘Yes, Hong Kong, Tam, I promise. It was not a trick,’ he said insistently, delighted at the effect his words had upon her. ‘You put those on.’
‘Alex . . .’ her hand was on his arm, restraining him. ‘You not tell me lie now?’
‘No!’ he said vehemently. ‘No, of course not. Why should I lie now?’ He saw the cloud lift from her face. ‘Make yourself at home.’ He waved expansively at the appointments of the spartan cabin and left her to herself.
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