by Edwyn Gray
By the time Rapier had drawn close to the drifting vessel, the black slick polluting the surface was thicker and the acrid fumes rising up from the sea was making the eyes of the men on the bridge of the submarine smart and sting. Streaks of oil were now clearly visible down the sides of the junk and the flapping rudder showed she was not under control.
‘Foredeck party topsides at the double.’
By the time Morgan’s men had emerged from the gun tower and assembled on the foredeck, less than a hundred yards of oil polluted water separated the two vessels. Rapier was lying broadside on to the wind and Hamilton had to brace himself against the motion of the submarine as his binoculars scanned the abandoned junk for signs of life. But the decks were empty and the scattered oil barrels clattering noisily against the bulwarks and sliding from one side to the other as the boat rolled in the swell, warned him that disaster had already struck.
The deserted junk posed no apparent danger, but Hamilton knew the value of caution. It was tempting to assume that the abandoned vessel was harmless - but he remembered the Royal Navy had often employed a similar ploy during the Kaiser war when their deadly Q ships hunted Germany’s U-boats to death by masquerading as innocent merchantmen. And, despite the evidence of his own eyes, he wanted to make sure he was not walking into a trap. Bending over the voice pipe he ordered the helmsman to circle the junk at half-speed.
Rapier moved slowly across the stern and started to pass down the lee side of the abandoned vessel, while Hamilton continued to search the deck and upperworks for some sign of the crew.
‘Christ Almighty! What the hell’s that...?’
Hamilton broke off his examination of the poop as he heard Scott’s shocked exclamation. A chilling undertone of horror in the navigator’s voice sent an involuntary shiver down his spine and he turned his attention to midship section of the junk. The blood drained from his face as he saw the reason for Scott’s incredulous shout.
A naked body was spreadeagled against the side of the deckhouse. It hung suspended like a limp starfish, the wrists and ankles secured by ropes to the four corners of the primitive wooden structure, with the head drooped forward and the exposed flesh covered with hundreds of crawling flies. The breeze blowing the tangled black hair across the face made recognition impossible, but a quick inspection with the binoculars revealed that it was the body of a woman.
Hamilton’s hands trembled as he lowered the glasses. Although it was impossible to see the woman’s face, he knew instinctively that it was Chai Chen. Bringing his emotions under control and taking a deep breath, Hamilton stepped away from the rail and moved towards the voice pipe.
‘Stop motors... slow ahead starboard.’ Rapier’s bows swung towards the junk and he leaned over the for’ard screen. ‘Morgan! I’m going alongside. Use a grappling hook to secure for boarding.’
Returning to the starboard wing he waited for the submarine to drift closer. He forced himself not to look at the obscenity of the tortured girl stretched rigidly against the side of the deckhouse and he concentrated all of his attention into the task of bringing Rapier safely alongside the abandoned junk.
‘Stop starboard motor... slow astern both. Full starboard helm.’
Morgan balanced himself on the edge of the ballast tank, swung the weighted rope like a cowboy with a lasso, judged the distance with an expert eye, and let go. The grappling hook soared up from the deck of the submarine, landed squarely over the weatherworn bulwarks in the bow of the junk, and the line pulled taut as the deck party hauled in the slack.
‘Line secured, sir.’
‘Take over, Alistair. Keep her close alongside.’ Hamilton swung his leg over the conning tower coaming and shinned down the iron rungs to join the gunner’s mate and the men waiting on the foredeck. ‘Well done, Chief. I’m going aboard first. Once I’m safely over I want you and two men to follow and back me up.’
Clinging to the life line, Hamilton edged gingerly down the slippery slopes of the weed-encrusted ballast tank, balanced himself precariously at the water’s edge and carefully gauged the swing of the submarine as the two vessels drifted together in the wind. At exactly the right moment, he leapt across the narrow gap, grabbed for a handhold, and hauled himself up the slab side of the junk onto the deck. Pausing at the rail, he signaled to Morgan to follow and then made his way along the oil-stained deck towards the wooden shelter amidships.
As he came around the side of the deckhouse and saw Chai Chen’s body at close-quarters for the first time he stopped, held on to the rail for support, and was violently sick in the scuppers. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and steeling himself forward he started to unfasten the ropes Mihoro had used to secure his victim in position.
Chai Chen was dead. And the ugly cuts and burns on her body showed that her death had not been easy. Hamilton tried not to look as he freed the ropes binding her wrists and ankles and lowered the pitiful remains of the girl onto the deck with a gentle compassion surprising for a man with his reputation.
‘Anything I can do, sir?’ Morgan asked as Hamilton found a length of ragged canvas with which to cover the body.
Rapier’s commander knelt beside Chai Chen in silence and it was not until the gunner’s mate repeated the question that he came out of his reverie.
‘Thanks, Chief - I can manage. But there’s one thing you can do. Most of the De Gama Company’s junks are fitted with old Packard automobile engines - I remember Alburra telling me about them during one of my visits. I daresay this one’s the same as the others. See if you can locate some cans of petrol. Bring one to me and use the others to soak the decking and upperworks.’
Morgan returned a few minutes later to find Hamilton still kneeling beside the makeshift shroud. He put a two gallon can of Amoco on the deck in front of the skipper and then made his way to the stern to help the other submariners sprinkle the remaining gasoline containers over the weather worn woodwork of the junk.
Hamilton rose slowly to his feet, unscrewed the brass cap of the can, and tilted the container so that the inflammable spirit splattered over the canvas sheet covering Chai Chen’s body. When it was completely empty, he threw it into the scuppers and made his way back to the poop. There was nothing more he could do - nothing except to swear revenge on the barbarous savages responsible for the atrocity. The expression on his face was carved from granite as he approached the Rapier’s gunner.
‘Did your men find anyone else aboard, Chief!’
Morgan nodded vaguely towards the bows. ‘Only an old Chinaman. His legs looked like they’d been broken with the butt end of a rifle. He was dead too.’ The Welshman paused for a moment at the memory of Chen Yu’s agonized death mask. ‘What sort of bastards could torture an old man and a girl, sir?’
Hamilton’s face lost none of its grimness. ‘I don’t know, Chief. But if I ever find them...’ He left the threat unfinished. ‘Get your men back to Rapier. I can’t risk staying on the surface any longer.’
Restraining an impulse to go back to the girl, Hamilton walked to the port side of the junk and waited while Morgan and the two sailors jumped on to the submarine’s foredeck. Then, having prised the grappling hook out of the bulwarks, he leapt across the narrow width of water separating the two vessels, and joined them.
‘Get below, Chief and secure the gun hatch. We’ll be diving in a couple of minutes.’ Tossing the hook for Morgan to catch, he made his way unhurriedly down the foredeck, swung himself up the rungs on the outside of the conning tower, and dropped on to the bridge. ‘Stand by to dive ... all hands below!’ He bent over the voice pipe as Scott and the look-outs slid into the hatchway and went down the ladder into the control room. ‘Slow astern both motors. Full port rudder. Call all hands to diving stations, Number One.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Standing by.’
As Rapier went astern and backed slowly away from the junk Hamilton walked to the signal locker behind the binnacle, unfastened the watertight door, and took out a Very pistol. Slipping a cartr
idge into the breach, he snapped it shut, and moved to the starboard, side of the bridge. He waited until the submarine was safely clear and then, aiming carefully at the base of the tall bamboo main mast, he squeezed the trigger.
The signal cartridge hissed across the water and struck a pile of petrol-soaked sacks where it came to rest, buzzing and sizzling like an angry bee as the fuse burned down. The sudden flash of the flare ignited a pool of gasoline in the shadow of the deckhouse, there was a violent explosion, and within seconds the entire deck from poop to bows was a soaring mass of roaring flames. Hamilton lowered the pistol and watched. He was not a religious man but, alone on the bridge with no one to see, he lowered his head in silent prayer...
‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who was responsible, sir,’ Mannon observed quietly as Hamilton clipped the lower hatch and came down the final rungs of the ladder into the bright sanity of the control room.
‘I don’t suppose we will,’ Rapier's commander agreed grimly. ‘But I’m quite certain about one thing - only the Japs would have done something like that. And from now on any enemy ship we meet up with will be sunk without warning. Furthermore, no prisoners will be taken.’
Mannon made no reply. The skipper had been through a bad experience and the black mood would soon pass. Most of the Rapier's crew had heard what had happened on board the junk and Chai Chen’s relationship with their captain was common knowledge. His reaction was understandable in the circumstances.
‘Where to now, sir?’ Mannon asked in an attempt to change the subject and to direct Hamilton’s mind towards other matters. Brooding would only make things worse. ‘O’Brien says we’ve less than half capacity in the bunkers. If we can’t get hold of some more fuel our maximum surface range will be down to two thousand miles at the most.’
Hamilton nodded. Although his expression had lost none of its grimness he seemed to be thinking rationally again.
‘We’ll make for Charlotte Island to begin with, Number One. The TGM reports only four torpedoes left so we’ll have to go to the island to load up the spares. And at the same time, we can top up our water and stores. After that we go hunting for a tanker.’
‘But supposing the Japs have already found the island, sir?’
‘I doubt that they have, Number One. Only Rapier's officers know about it...’ He paused for a moment as he remembered. ‘And of course, my Portuguese friends.’
‘They might have forced the girl to tell them,’ Mannon suggested.
Hamilton’s face blazed in anger. He swung round as Mannon put the question and, for a brief moment, the submarine’s executive officer thought that the captain was going to strike him. Hamilton controlled his fury with superhuman effort.
‘If they had forced her to talk she would have told them about the rendezvous and we would have walked straight into an ambush. The fact that the Japs merely threw the oil overboard and then left the area shows she kept her mouth shut.’ Hamilton shivered as he recalled what Chai Chen had suffered to protect Rapier and her crew. His shoulders bowed suddenly and, without another word, he turned on his heel and made his way to the privacy of the wardroom to be alone with his thoughts....
Ten
‘Charlotte Island dead ahead, sir!’
Hamilton made his way forward to take over the periscope for the final approach and he carefully focused the low wedge of land in the center of the upper lens. The island resembled a saddle placed astride the blue rim of the horizon. The hummocked hill at the western end formed the pommel, while the gradual upwards slope to the east, ending with abrupt suddenness in the cliffs at Mi Lim Point, completed the illusion. To the south, and nearest to the submarine, the encircling arm of the palm-studded sandspit elbowed the sea aside to enclose a fine natural harbor within its protective grasp.
‘Stand by Diving Stations. Slow ahead both motors.’ He checked the bearing of the hill against the gyro repeater. ‘One point to starboard.’
It was a familiar routine. At least once a week for the last two months Rapier had nosed her way past Taichee Rock into the secluded bay and then slid under the camouflage nets covering the tiny inlet on the west side of the lagoon, to begin unloading the torpedoes and stores which Hamilton had carefully spirited out of Hong Kong in readiness for a situation such as this.
A line of red painted floats marking the fishing net suspended beneath, was clearly visible as Rapier edged within three miles of the island - innocent enough at first sight but, in fact, deliberately laid by the submarine’s crew during their first survey visit to mark an area of treacherous shoals to the southeast of the island.
Hamilton carried out a standard sky-search for hostile aircraft and then moved back from the ’scope. ‘Take over the watch, Sub,’ he told Villiers. ‘I want a few words with Roger in the wardroom. Give me a shout as soon as you see the starboard channel marker.’ He grinned. ‘You’ll find it on the north shore of the entrance - it looks like a pile of stones with an empty barrel on top.’
Despite the seemingly carefree way in which Hamilton had selected and prepared Rapier's secret hiding place he had, in point of fact, tackled the scheme with considerable thought and a surprising attention to detail. Scott and his two assistants had used the submarine’s rubber dinghy to survey the anchorage on Rapier's first inspection visit to the island and, on returning to the boat, the navigator had drawn up an accurate chart complete with cross bearings and depth soundings. Then, in consultation with Hamilton, an approach course was plotted and where the natural features were non-existent, artificial navigation marks had been put down - an untidily piled heap of stones on the beach or perhaps a section of bark carved from an old palm tree lying in a prominent position close to the shoreline.
Villiers took his place at the periscope and watched the island sliding past on the port side, while Hamilton rifled through the chart-table drawers in search of the maps he needed for his Council-of-War with Mannon, Scott and O’Brien.
‘Can’t see Betty Grable coming down the beach to welcome us ashore,’ the young reservist joked to pass the tedium of Rapier’s slow approach. ‘I hope you blokes remembered to bring the map showing where the treasure was buried.’
The men on duty watch in the control room grinned. Villier’s casual attitude made a change from the skipper’s customary dour concentration or Mannon’s pedantic attention to detail.
‘As long as you can’t see Errol Flynn swinging about in the trees I don’t mind, sir,’ Venables retorted from his seat at the diving panel. ‘I don’t fancy having any competition when I meet all them hula-hula girls!’
Villiers winked broadly at the chief ERA and then returned to his solitary vigil at the periscope. Suddenly something caught his attention and he flicked the lever of the high magnification lens.
‘Hey! Scotty! I thought you said those two volcanoes were extinct?’
Hamilton looked up sharply. ‘They’re as dead as dodos. I’ve been up and inspected the craters myself. Why?’
The grin on the sub-lieutenant’s face faded. He stared through the lens again to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. ‘There’s black smoke coming up in the direction of the more northerly one, sir.’
Hamilton put the charts down on the table and took over the periscope. He stared at the smoke, scanned along the length of the island, and then returned the lens for a more detailed examination of the northern sector. Villiers’ report - and it was a natural enough error - had been wrong in locating the smoke as rising from the extinct crater of the squat volcanic hill dominating the lagoon on the left hand side of the island. It was, in fact, coming from a wooded area at the base of the hill and less than half a mile from the north shore itself. It was impossible to determine the exact location, because the fire was spreading rapidly through the dense undergrowth, but Hamilton felt his mouth go dry as he realized that somewhere in the midst of the smoke and flames, was Rapier’s carefully prepared base camp and storage depot. Was it just a spontaneous bush fire - or had the enemy discovered their secret?
‘Down periscope! Stop motors. Are you getting any HE, Glover?’
The hydro-phone operator slipped the pads over his ears and moved the knobs of his listening apparatus. He shook his head.
‘No HE, sir. Just the surf breaking on the beach.’
‘Try an Asdic probe.’
Glover swivelled his seat to the right and transmitted a series of sonar pulses that pinged sharply in the loudspeaker above his cabinet. ‘No contacts, sir!’
‘I reckon this is when we could do with one of these new-fangled radio location sets,’ Hamilton grumbled quietly to Mannon. ‘But I’m certain about one thing - if there is an enemy vessel in the vicinity it must be anchored or else we’d have picked up its engine noises on the hydrophone.’ He paused to consider his next move. ‘Slow ahead both motors. Stand by Torpedo Room. Up periscope.’
The fire was still burning and the northerly breeze was sweeping the dense smoke out across the lagoon, where it hung above the water like a heavy sea mist. Rapier glided silently inshore while Hamilton carried out a detailed examination of the anchorage. Satisfied there was no enemy ship in the lagoon he turned the lens towards the entrance. This time there was something - a small boat chugging slowly towards the shore from the direction of Taichi Rock.
‘Close up Attack Team! Steer one point to port... blow up all tubes!’
Hamilton could well understand the reluctance of an enemy commander to enter the lagoon. Its waters were uncharted and treacherous and he would have had no time to survey the depths or locate any hidden reefs. In addition, no sensible captain would want to find himself trapped inside a virtually landlocked harbor in the event of a surprise attack. And this appreciation of the enemy’s reasoning led him to one inevitable conclusion - a conclusion backed by Glover’s failure to pick up any HE and his own inability to sight the ship through Rapier’s periscope. The intruder must be anchored in the lee of Taichee Rock.