But there were no trades just now, not even the lightest zephyr of a breeze; it was absolutely still and airless and suffocatingly hot and the tiny movement of air from their slow passage through the water was only a mockery of coolness and worse than nothing at all. The blazing sun was falling now, slipping far to the west, but still burning hot: Nicolson had both sails stretched as awnings, the jib for the fore end and the lug-sail, its yard lashed half-way up the mast, stretched aft as far as it would go, but even beneath the shelter of these the heat was still oppressive, somewhere between eighty and ninety degrees with a relative humidity of over 85 per cent. It was seldom enough in the East Indies, at any time of the year, that the temperature dropped below eighty degrees. Nor was there any relief to be obtained, any chance of cooling off by plunging over the side into the water, the temperature of which lay somewhere between eighty degrees and eighty-five. All the passengers could do was to recline limply and listlessly in the shade of awnings, to sit and suffer and sweat and pray for the sun to go down.
The passengers. Nicolson, sitting in the sternsheets with the tiller in his hand, looked slowly round the people in the boat, took in their condition and lifeless inertia and tightened his lips. If he had to be afloat in an open boat in the tropics, hundreds — thousands — of miles from help and surrounded by the enemy and enemy-held islands, he could hardly have picked a boatload of passengers less well equipped for handling a boat, with a poorer chance of survival. There were exceptions, of course, men like McKinnon and Van Effen would always be exceptions, but as for the remainder . . .
Excluding himself, there were seventeen people aboard. Of these, as far as sailing and fighting the boat were concerned, only two were definite assets: McKinnon, imperturbable, competent, infinitely resourceful, was worth any two men, and Van Effen, an otherwise unknown quantity, had already proved his courage and value in an emergency. About Vannier it was difficult to say: no more than a boy, he might possibly stand up to prolonged strain and hardship, but time alone would show. Walters, still looking sick and shaken, would be a useful man to have around when he had recovered. And that, on the credit side, was just about all.
Gordon, the second steward, a thin-faced, watery-eyed and incurably furtive individual, a known thief who had been conspicuously and mysteriously absent from his action stations that afternoon, was no seaman, no fighter and could be trusted to do nothing whatsoever that didn’t contribute to the immediate safety and benefit of himself. Neither the Muslim priest nor the baffling, enigmatic Farnholme — they were seated together on the same thwart, conversing in low murmurs — had shown up too well that afternoon either. There was no more kindly nor better-meaning man than Willoughby, but, outside his engine room and deprived of his beloved books and for all his rather pathetic eagerness to be of assistance, there was no more ineffectual and helpless person alive than the gentle second engineer. The captain, Evans, the quartermaster, Fraser and Jenkins, the young able seaman, were too badly hurt to give any more than token assistance. Alex, the young soldier — Nicolson had discovered that his name was Sinclair — was as jittery and unstable as ever, his wide, staring eyes darting restlessly, ceaselessly, from one member of the boat’s company to the next, the palms of his hands rubbing constantly up and down the thighs of his trousers, as if desperately seeking to rub off some contamination. That left only the three women and young Peter — and if anyone wanted to stack the odds even higher, Nicolson thought bitterly, there was always Siran and his six cut-throat friends not twenty feet away. The prospects, overall, were not good.
The one happy, carefree person in the two boats was young Peter Tallon. Clad only in a haltered pair of white, very short shorts, he seemed entirely unaffected by the heat or anything else, bouncing incessantly up and down on the sternsheets and having to be rescued from falling overboard a dozen times a minute. Familiarity breeding trust, he had quite lost his earlier fear of the other members of the crew but had not yet given him his unquestioning confidence: whenever Nicolson, whose seat by the tiller was nearest to the youngster, offered him a piece of ship’s biscuit or a mug with some watered down sweet condensed milk, he would smile at him shyly, lean forward, snatch the offering, retreat and eat or drink it, head bent and looking suspiciously at Nicolson under lowered eyelids. But if Nicolson reached out a hand to touch or catch him he would fling himself against Miss Drachmann, who sat on the starboard side of the sternsheets, entwine one chubby hand in the shining black hair, often with a force that brought a wince and an involuntary ‘ouch’ from the girl, twist his head round and regard him gravely through the spread fingers of his left hand. It was a favourite trick of his, this peeping from behind his fingers, one which he seemed to imagine made him invisible. For long moments at a time Nicolson forgot the war, the wounded men and their own near-hopeless situation, absorbed in the antics of the little boy but always he came back to the bitter present, to an even keener despair, to a redoubled fear of what would happen to the child when the Japanese finally caught up with them.
And they would catch up with them. Nicolson had known that, known it beyond any shadow of doubt, known that Captain Findhorn knew it also despite his encouraging talk of sailing for Lepar and the Sunda Straits. The Japanese had their position to within a few miles, could find them and pick them off whenever they wished. The only mystery was why they had not already done so. Nicolson wondered if the others knew that their hours of freedom and safety were limited, that the cat was playing with the mouse. if they did, it was impossible to tell by their behaviour and appearance. A helpless, useless bunch in many ways, a crushing liability to any man who hoped to sail his boat to freedom, but Nicolson had to concede them one saving grace: Gordon and the shocked Sinclair apart, their morale was magnificent.
They had worked hard and uncomplainingly to get all the blankets and provisions stowed away as neatly as possible, had cleared spaces at the expense of their own comfort for the wounded men — who themselves, in spite of obvious agony, had never complained once — and accepted all Nicolson’s orders and their own cramped positions cheerfully and willingly. The two nurses, surprisingly and skilfully assisted by Brigadier Farnholme, had worked for almost two hours over the wounded men and done a splendid job. Never had the Ministry of Transport’s insistence that all lifeboats carry a comprehensive first-aid kit been more fully justified, and seldom could it have been put to better use: collapse revivers, ‘Omnopon,’ sulphanilarnide powder, codeine compounds, dressings, bandages, gauze, cotton wool and jelly for burns — they were all there and they were all used. Surgical kit Miss Drachmann carried herself: and with the lifeboat’s hatchet and his own knife McKinnon had perfectly adequate splints iniprovised from the bottom-boards for Corporal Eraser’s shattered arm within ten minutes of being asked for them.
And Miss Plenderleith was magnificent. There was no other word for it. She had a genius for reducing circumstances and situations to reassuring normality, and might well have spent her entire life in an open boat. She accepted things as they were, made the very best of them, and had more than sufficient authority to induce others to do the same. It was she who wrapped the wounded in blankets and pillowed their heads on lifebelts, scolding them like unruly and recalcitrant little children if they showed any signs of disobeying: Miss Plenderleith never had to scold anyone twice. It was she who had taken over the commissariat and watched over the wounded until they had eaten the last crumb and drunk the last drop of what she had offered them. It was she who had snatched Farnholme’s gladstone bag from him, stowed it beneath her side bench, picked up the hatchet McKinnon had laid down, and informed the seething Brigadier, with the light of battle in her eyes, that his drinking days were over and that the contents of the bag, which he had been on the point of broaching, would be in future reserved for medicinal use only — and thereafter, incredibly, had produced needles and wool from the depths of her own capacious bag and calmly carried on with her knitting. And it was she who was now sitting with a board across her knees, carefully slicing bully beef and bread, doling out biscuits, barley sugar and thinned down condensed milk and ordering around a grave and carefully unsmiling McKinnon, whom she had pressed into service as her waiter, as if he were one of her more reliable but none too bright school children. Magnificent, Nicolson thought, trying hard to match his bo’sun’s deadpan expression, just magnificent: there was no other word for her. Suddenly her voice sharpened, rose almost an octave.