“Where are you going, man?” Nicolson had to shout to make himself heard over the roar of the flames. “Damn all anybody can do up there now. We’re abandoning ship. Come on!”
“Must see if there’s anyone else alive,” Van Effen yelled. He shouted something else and Nicolson thought he heard him mention guns, but couldn’t be sure. His voice didn’t carry too well above the roar of the two great fires and Nicolson’s attention was already elsewhere. The Zeros — there were only three of them — were no longer circling the ship but banking steeply, altering formation to line abreast and heading straight for the midships superstructure. It needed no imagination at all to realise what tempting and completely exposed targets they must be, perched high on top of the ship. Nicolson tightened his hold on Corporal Fraser and pointed urgently out to sea with his free hand.
“You haven’t a chance, you cra2y fool!” he shouted. Van Effen was now at the top of the ladder. “Are you blind or mad?”
“Look to yourself, my friend,” Van Effen called, and was gone. Nicolson waited no longer, he would have to look to himself, and with a vengeance. Only a few steps, only a few seconds to the door of the wheelhouse, but Fraser was now only a limp, powerless weight in his arms, and it would take a Zero perhaps six seconds, no more, to cover the intervening distance. Already he could hear the thin, high snarl of the engines, muted but menacing over the steady roar of the flames, but he didn’t dare look, he knew where they were anyway, two hundred yards away and with the gunsights lined up on his unprotected back. The wheelhouse sliding door was jammed, he could get only a minimal purchase on it with his left hand, then it was suddenly jerked open, the bo’sun was dragging Corporal Fraser inside and Nicolson was catapulting himself forward on to the deck, wincing involuntarily as he waited for the numbing shock of cannon shells smashing into his back. And then he had rolled and twisted his way into shelter and safety, there was a brief, crescendoing thunder of, sound and the planes had swept by only feet above the wheel-house. Not a gun had been fired.
Nicolson shook his head in dazed incredulity and rose slowly to his feet. Maybe the smoke and the flame had blinded the pilots, perhaps even they had exhausted their ammunition — the number of cannon shells a fighter could carry was limited. Not that it mattered anyway, not any more. Farnholme was on the bridge now, Nicolson saw, helping McKinnon to carry the soldier below. Vannier was gone, but Evans was still there with the captain. Then the chartroom door swung open on its shattered hinges, and once again Nicolson’s face tightened in disbelief.
The man who stood before him was almost naked, clad only in the charred tatters of what had been a pair of blue trousers: they were still smoking, smouldering at the edges. Eyebrows and hair were singed and frizzled and the chest and arms red and scorched: the chest rose and fell very quickly in small shallow breaths, like a man whose lungs have been so long starved of air that he cannot find time to breathe deeply. His face was very pale.
“Jenkins!” Nicolson had advanced, seized the man by the shoulders then dropped his hands quickly as the other winced with pain. “How on earth — I saw the ‘planes—–”
“Somebody trapped, sir!” Jenkins interrupted. “For’ard pump-room.” He spoke hurriedly, urgently but jerkily, only a word or two for every breath. “Dived off the catwalk — landed on the hatch. Heard knocking, sir.”
“So you got the hell out of it? Is that it?” Nicolson asked softly.
“No, sir. Clips jammed.” Jenkins shook his head tiredly. “Couldn’t open them, sir.”
“There’s a pipe clipped to the hatch,” Nicolson said savagely. “You know that as well as I do.”
Jenkins said nothing, turned his palms up for inspection. Nicolson winced. There was no skin left, none at all, just red, raw flesh and the gleam of white bone.
“Good God!” Nicolson stared at the hands for a moment, then looked up at the pain-filled eyes. “My apologies, Jenkins. Go below. Wait outside the wireless office.” He turned round quickly as someone touched him on the shoulder. “Van Effen. I suppose you know that apart from being a bloody fool you’re the luckiest man alive?”
The tall Dutchman dropped two rifles, an automatic carbine and ammunition on the deck and straightened up. “You were right,” he said quietly. “I was wasting my time. All dead.” He nodded at Jenkins’s retreating back. “I heard him. That’s the small deckhouse just for’ard of the bridge, isn’t it? I’ll go.”
Nicolson looked at the calm grey eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Come with me if you like. Might need help to get him out, whoever he is.”
In the passage below they bumped into Vannier, staggering under the weight of an armful of blankets. “How are the boats, Fourth?” Nicolson asked quickly.
“Remarkable, sir. They’re hardly scratched. You’d think the Japs had left them alone on purpose.”
“Both of them?” Nicolson asked in astonishment.
“Yes, sir,”
“Gift horses,” Nicolson muttered. “Carry on, Fourth. Don’t forget the stretcher for the captain.”
Down on the main deck the heat was almost suffocating, and both men were gasping for oxygen before ten seconds had passed. The petrol fire in the cargo holds was twice, three times as fierce as it had been five minutes ago, and dimly, through the roar of the flames, they could hear an almost continuous rumble of explosions as the metal fuel barrels ruptured and burst in the intense heat. But Nicolson noticed these things with only a corner of his mind. He was standing by the water-tight steel door of the entrance house to the hatch, rapping on the surface with the end of the two-foot length of pipe that served as clip levers for these doors. As he waited for a reply, bent low over the hatch, he could see the sweat from his forehead dripping on to^the hatch in an almost continuous trickle. The air was so dry and parched, the metal so hot — they could feel the heat of the deck even through the soles of their shoes — that the drips of perspiration evaporated and vanished almost as they touched the deck . . . And then, so suddenly that both men started in spite of their tense expectation, there came an answering rap from inside, very faint but quite unmistakable, and Nicolson waited no longer. The clips were very stiff indeed — some explosive shock must have warped or shifted the metal — and it took a dozen powerful strokes from the sledge he carried to free the two jammed clips: the last retaining clip sheered at the first blow.
A gust of hot, fetid air swept up from the gloomy depths of the pump-room, but Nicolson and Van Effen ignored it and peered into the darkness. Then Van Effen had switched on his torch and they could clearly see the oil-streaked grey hair of a man climbing up towards the top of the ladder. And then two long arms reached down and, a moment later, the man was standing on deck beside him, a forearm flung up in reflex instinct to shield himself from the heat of the flames. He was drenched in oil from head to foot, the whites of his eyes almost comically prominent in the black, smeared face.
Nicolson peered at him for a moment, and then said in astonishment: “Willy!”
“Even so,” Willoughby intoned. “None other. Good old Willy. Golden lads and lasses must, etc., but not superannuated second engineers. No ordinary mortals we.” He wiped some oil from his face. “Sing no sad songs for Willoughby.”
“But what the hell were you doing? — never mind. It can wait. Come on, Willy. No time to lose. We’re leaving.”
Willoughby panted for air as they climbed up to the bridge. “Dived in for shelter, my boy. Almost cut off in my prime. Where are we going?”
“As far away from this ship as possible,” Nicolson said grimly. “She’s due to go up any moment now.”
Willoughby turned round, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Only a petrol fire, Johnny. Always a chance that it’ll burn itself out.”
“Number one cargo tank’s gone up.”
“The boats, and with all speed,” Willoughby said hastily. “Old Willy would live and fight another day.”
Within five minutes both boats had been provisioned and lowered for embarkation. All the survivors, including the wounded, were gathered together, waiting. Nicolson looked at the captain.
“Ready when you give the word, sir.”
Findhorn smiled faintly: even that seemed an effort, for the smile ended in a grimace of pain. “A late hour for this modesty, Mr. Nicolson, You’re in charge, my boy.” He coughed, screwed shut his eyes, then looked up thoughtfully. “The ‘planes, Mr. Nicolson. They could cut us to ribbons when we’re lowering into the water.”