by Peter Tonkin
Life was everywhere, the still air beneath the canopy hummed with it, but much of it was invisible. The indri and lemurs sang their songs morning and evening. The birds courted in the dawn and roosted in the gloaming. Frogs rivalled the chirruping of the cicadas. Monkeys called, pigs rooted. There were busy wings, of little birds and massive butterflies. Something which might have been a deer moved in the distance. In fact there was movement all around, most often in the comer of his eye. A shadow strangely out of place suddenly resolved itself into a snake slithering easily up a vertical trunk, or a column of ants or termites millions strong. A formless flash would resolve itself after a second into a little tree lizard or a mantis or a scorpion six inches long.
‘Stop daydreaming,’ said Sally, loudly, her voice only just carrying over the susurrating cacophony all around.
Richard hesitated for an instant longer, watching her white form forcing its way determinedly along the pig run into the shadows, then, pausing only to take a careful bearing on his compass, he followed her.
The pig run made a surprisingly good path. Most of it was open, and when the path became a tunnel below some over-arching bush, it was easy enough for them to crouch down and scramble through, though after these escapades they were careful to check each other for unwelcome visitors which might have dropped from above. Such was the overabundance of undergrowth down by the coast, Richard had thought that they would be reduced to trying to cut their way through right from the word go, which would have meant an early abandonment of the expedition; not even Sally would be able to carve her way very far with the little fishing knives, sharp as they were. But this pig run led to others, older, wider, easier to follow; and those led to yet more. And soon the gathering ground led to lightening undergrowth. Nowhere were the hill slopes particularly vertiginous but as they became a little steeper the undergrowth seemed to lose its grip and the spaces between the trees really did become cathedral-like in their uncluttered, airy vastness.
Here Richard and Sally got their first glimpses of the lemurs and the monkeys as those agile lords of the upper reaches leaped from branch to branch, calling in apparent derision of their earth-bound cousins. Here, too, flying squirrels and even flying lizards glided from tree to tree; and once, incredibly, a snake several metres long, some lacy part of its skin spread like a parachute, seemed to swim sinuously through the air above their disbelieving heads. But on their own level, only the insects bustled. Richard was very wary of the great forest scorpions, and Sally admitted a nervousness of the great red centipedes the better part of thirty centimetres in length, and their vividly tiger-striped cousins. Richard, thinking of the African jungle, also kept in mind the dangerous, sinister leeches whose bodies could measure twenty centimetres and whose bite could inject lethal infections.
Three hours were sufficient to allow them passage through the forest to the point where the upper slopes of the central hill were too sharply angled to hold much soil or any trees. Here the jungle gave way to scrub and grass. The fetid air gave way to cleaner breezes. The humid shadows were replaced by bright, salt-smelling sunshine, but there was no diminution in the febrile insect activity. Bushes seemingly clad in the most dazzling of blossom exploded into myriad butterflies at any near approach, and the chirruping of the cicadas went some way to drowning out the raucous calls of the seagulls.
It was mid-afternoon now and the sun lay on their heads and shoulders as weightily as molten gold. They hadn’t thought to bring hats. Almost as soon as they came out of the forest they stopped to drink; sweat was plucked off their skin and out of their clothing as rapidly as dampness on a just-boiled egg. ‘This’ll have to be a short visit,’ gasped Richard, ‘unless we can find shade or headgear.’
Sally nodded once in curt reply and plunged on upwards, sending a cloud of crickets dancing up from under her feet. Richard looked at the sun and then at the view. The one was lowering and the other was restricted by the tops of the tall trees which broke the canopy and stood just above his eyeline. Turning back, he followed Sally’s dogged progress across that strange, utterly foreign field. After a couple of hundred metres, it gathered itself up into a kind of shoulder and then began to fall away again. On their left, the last high slope of the hill finally managed to attain a cliff. Behind them, the grass sward swept round to another ridge running back along the length of the island, whose shape was really only visible from the very point of the shoulder they had just crossed. In front of them now the grass levelled off so that the last few vertical metres, perhaps thirty, gathered into a headland resembling a human head with a flat square chin jutting eastwards to overlook the Rifleman Reef itself. And, as they discovered when they rounded the headland, the vertical wall of its east-facing cliff contained caves.
There were three caves in all. At the bottom of the cliff was a long, narrow cave which stood three metres high at the mid-section of its mouth but whose roof shelved down sharply to right and left and also as it plunged back. This cave was perhaps thirty metres long and its upper edge projected in a slight overhang which would make an easy ledge to scramble along from either narrow comer. The other two caves were a good fifteen metres above this. They were roughly on a level, vaguely round in shape and impossible to gauge in terms of depth from where Richard and Sally first observed them. They were separated by a rock slide which seemed to start at the topmost section of the cliff and come to rest at the centre of the overhang above the first cave.
The whole configuration looked disturbingly like the face of a giant staring blindly into the north-east. The effect was emphasised by the shadows gathering now as the sun sank down behind the headland in the western sky. Richard was struck silent by it, but not Sally. She looked up at it and said, ‘You know, I reckon if I got up on to that overhang it would be a pretty easy scramble right up to the top.’
Automatically, Richard looked away behind them to see where she would fall if she slipped up there. The brief ledge of the chin they were standing on fell away very steeply indeed into a green beard of jungle. If she came unstuck, she would bounce once and be gone. ‘It’s risky,’ he said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘All for one and one for all,’ she quoted, but there was more affection than mockery in the way she said it.
Typically, rather than retrace her steps, she struck on to the far side of the cave. Richard followed her, uneasily aware that the mouth-like opening seemed to be breathing cold air out across his shoulders. It was simple enough, however, to step up on to the overhanging ledge where it reached down to the grassy ground. And the ledge itself was well over a metre wide, an unbroken path leading upwards under the rounded bottom of an upper cave mouth and widening further until it was blocked by a nostril of scree which in turn reached back along a sloping forehead of rock to the topmost pate of the rough, weathered head. Sally almost ran and Richard had to hurry to keep up. At the cave mouth he paused and stood on tiptoe but the hollow socket was too far above his head for him to see into it.
Sally scrambled up the slope of scree. The broken rock was more solidly set than it looked and she disappeared up it like a tomboy up an apple tree. Richard was only a second or two behind her for all that his years and experience made him more careful than most in situations like this one. And within five minutes they were standing, side by side, upon the pinnacle of the island.
It was in area no bigger than the deck on top of the Luck Voyager’s navigation bridge, but it was round rather than square. It felt smaller because it was so high, so exposed, so remote — even from the forest. It afforded an unrivalled view over the whole of the island, the entire expanse of the Rifleman and much of this portion of the South China Sea. Slowly, they turned a complete circle, and then another, orientating in their minds the main features of the island and the reef at whose heart it stood.
The area itself was of grey rock spattered with guano, which had baked hard in the sunshine, and the most recent additions to which had been scoured away by the storm. Great boulders the size of sma
ll estate cars lay scattered near and far but none of them really interrupted the view. The island itself from this perspective seemed to have a slightly curving teardrop shape. They stood at the thickest section, at the centre of the round end which faced north-eastwards below the headland’s forested beard. Behind them, the long, narrowing line of the land twisted slightly as though the tail of the teardrop was running a little to the south, to enclose the white sand beach where the lifeboat was. On the other side of the curve, the jungle’s green deepened further into mangroves which ran straight into the sea.
Directly to the east, reaching up to north and south, the reef stretched away, mottling the blue-green of the water with pale shallows and aquamarine deeps. Away westward, the pattern was repeated with the pale shallows stretching away from the white sand beach but black abysses gathering grimly below the mangroves opposite. Richard studied all this with narrowed eyes and then through the binoculars. But he saved his longest and most careful scrutiny for the eastern reef and the two ships crushed against its outer edge. As he looked, glasses set on full magnification, eyes straining to make out details, Sally wandered off. The sun was just beginning to settle and the beach was in shadow already. An evening breeze picked up from the east, passing over the ships that Richard was looking at. And, as it stole towards the island, it carried with it the sounds being made on the vessels. The jungle fell silent as it sometimes will, and just for an instant Richard heard the distant report of gunshots.
At once, as though liberated by the sound, puffs of gunsmoke burst out across the distant decks and dark figures began to scurry to and fro, running, jumping, falling, lying. Richard went cold. There was a pitched battle going on out there. He opened his mouth to tell Sally what he could see when suddenly and all too near at hand the reason for the forest’s silence became manifest. A thunderous roar smashed the silence, Richard jerked the glasses from his eyes and whirled. Whirled and froze.
Behind him was an open space, thick with guano, framed by two tall rocks. And there, just as though some magical transformation had occurred, standing exactly where he had last seen Sally, perhaps five metres distant, was the biggest tiger he had ever seen in his life.
16
At times during the next dark days Robin wondered whether this was all some plot of Daniel Huuk’s to get her isolated, alone and too exhausted to refuse him. The days remained dark because, although the Sulu Queen was pounding south at her best speed, the storm gathered and lingered over her. This would have exhausted Robin even had she come aboard as captain fully rested and with nothing but her professional duties to carry out. Under the circumstances, her reserves ran out all too quickly. She had worked on ships with crews from different ethnic backgrounds before but even the most villainous of those crews had ultimately been employed by Heritage Mariner, and her company’s crew finders always ensured a preponderance of English speakers. Now, the only men she could communicate with directly were First Officer Li and Radio Officer Lai. Both of these worthies, however, were deeply in awe of Daniel and addressed the fair captain only on his say-so. The effect on Robin, already isolated by command, gender and race, was to drive her further and further into Daniel Huuk’s power. And what she found particularly disturbing was the fact that she could see it happening but could work out no way to stop it.
‘According to Twelvetoes, the last message from the Luck Voyager put her about here heading south-east at ten knots.’
‘That’s not very fast.’
‘She was, like us, storm-bound.’ Robin’s pale finger joined his darker one, resting on that section of the chart that Twelvetoes’ co-ordinates indicated. ‘Storm-bound and just to the north of dangerous ground,’ she mused. ‘Anything could have happened.’
‘That’s right,’ he answered, apparently thoughtlessly. ‘Remember the Derbyshire.’
A solid ram of wind hit the deckhouse, threatening to tear it from the deck. Sulu Queen heeled and corkscrewed in the darkness, coming out past Brothers Point and into the South China Sea proper. She, too, was heading through the storm at ten knots but on a south-easterly heading which would swing to due south as soon as Robin had a little more sea room and a little less weather to contend with. She straightened now, running her hand through her tousled hair — a gesture of extreme tiredness. She looked across from the chart table, over the bank of instruments to the back of the helmsman. He stood looking out through the streaming clearview, unable even to see the light on the stubby mast which stood on the forepeak. He glanced down occasionally, checking the course he was ordered to steer in spite of the best efforts of the massive tai-fun to tear the ship off course — off the sea and off the world altogether. At his shoulder, also straining to see through the whirling murk, stood First Officer Li. All four of them, sole occupants of the navigation bridge, were experienced seafarers and had their sea legs. Even so, the wild movement of the ship made them constantly shuffle as the wind outside and the waves beneath them tried to throw them over and down. The noise was as though an army of rabid wild cats was being thrown constantly against every vertical surface.
Still thinking of the Derbyshire, which had broken up and vanished in minutes, Robin said, ‘This is a bad one.’
‘Worst I can remember,’ agreed Daniel, his voice just audible. ‘They’re already calling it the storm of the century.’
‘Hmmm,’ she said, unimpressed. But the strength of the storm did order some priorities for her. She had better check the papers the crew members had brought aboard with them, set up the duty rosters and decide on the first drills. She would also have to decide, with her senior navigating officers, Li and Daniel, on a search pattern. And, with her lading officer, Li, whether there was any cargo that needed especial care in these extreme conditions, anything that might pose a danger to the ship, and which port they should head for to unload the cargo after they had picked up Richard, or if they could not find Richard, so that this voyage would not be a complete loss. That was as far in the future as the chance of any sleep, however; for if they found Richard they would probably find other survivors to be brought aboard and tended as necessary. Which meant that she needed to know who held current first aid certificates. And that brought her back to the crew’s papers. Which of course would all be in Cantonese.
The captain’s quarters were on the deck below and consisted of the day room, cabin and ablutions she had been using when Twelvetoes came aboard. Up here, however, there was an office and watch cabin traditionally reserved for the captain’s use when he or she needed to be readily available. The little suite of rooms led back on the starboard section of the bridge in parallel to the radio room on the port. ‘Mr Li,’ she said. ‘Captain Huuk and I are going into the day room here. I would be grateful if you could get the crews’ papers for me and bring them there. At the same time, you can get the new second officer … ’ she looked at Daniel, momentarily at a loss.
‘Mr Yung,’ he prompted.
‘Second Officer Yung to take over the watch. It’s a little early for the morning watch but never mind. I’ll be here, and up all night; but I want a competent deck officer on watch until the weather moderates.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ He turned to go.
‘And I’d better see the chief, too. I’d be happier with an engine room watch.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ He took a step towards the door.
‘And I see Radio Officer Lai has vanished now that we are out of the zone. I want him back. Twenty-four-hour radio watch until we find Luck Voyager. Has he got an assistant?’
First Officer Li simply shook his head and moved, hoping to get off the bridge before she thought of something else for him to do.
And so the night passed. A stream of increasingly sleepy people were summoned from their bunks to consult with the icily exhausted captain and her coolly expressionless translator. There was no real resentment among the officers and crew at this. Shipchandler Hip had supplied absolute professionals who knew that the smooth running of the ship now and in the fut
ure — especially under current conditions, especially with such a mission in prospect — was far more important than a little beauty sleep.
And to be fair, even though he had resigned and gone ashore in a fit of impatient pique, Captain So had run a tight ship. He had used the enforced rest in Kwai Chung to have something of a refit so that the equipment on the unusually busy bridge was every bit the equal of the coolly professional mariners who were using it. Second Officer Yung, called to his morning watch well before 04.00, nevertheless busied himself checking the collision alarm radar which stood empty and quiet even at its widest setting, the Deccanav read-outs which he double-checked with the Chinagraph line of their course stretching across the chart to the point where it said ‘Dangerous Ground’, the weather predictor charts which scrolled out of the fax and were carried through to the radio room for Radio Officer Lai to double-check with the local weather stations. And through the young officer’s businesslike peregrinations there passed a range of other officers all called into the room where the extraordinary gweilo captain sat with her sinister Triad minder.
By the time the sun had heaved itself into the sky somewhere above the impenetrable black battlements of cloud and Second Officer Yung had been relieved by Third Officer Ping and the day had signally failed to appear, the captain’s reputation was established. As is often the case with crews summoned together at the last moment, the majority of the men aboard had never sailed together. They were keen, therefore, to establish working relationships, the most important of which was with the commander. No matter how good the crew, how well-found or well-equipped the hull, the ship was only as good as her captain; and just as the crew were strange and foreign to Robin, so was she to them. Most of them had never before been commanded by a gweilo. None of them had ever been commanded by a woman, a situation which gave rise to lively and libidinous speculation. And none of them had ever imagined that a gweilo woman captain with a Triad minder and lover at her side every moment of the night and day would be allowed to exist in the Middle Kingdom.