“Mr. McKinnon! What on earth are you doing?” The bo’sun had dropped his latest cargo of bread and corned beef to the bottom-boards and sunk down on his knees beside her, peering out below the awning, ignoring Miss Plenderleim as she repeated her question. She repeated it a third time, received no answer, tightened her lips and jabbed him ferociously in the ribs with the haft of her knife. This time she got a reaction.
“Will you look what you’ve done, you clumsy idiot?” She pointed her knife angrily at McKinnon’s knee: between it and the side bench half a pound of meat was squashed almost flat.
“Sorry, Miss Plenderleith, sorry.” The bo’sun stood up, absently rubbing shreds of beef off his trousers, and turned to Nicolson. “‘Plane approaching, sir. Green ninety, near enough.”
Nicolson glanced at him out of suddenly narrowed eyes, stopped and stared out to the west under the awning. He saw the plane almost at once, not more than two miles away, at about two thousand feet. Walters, the lookout in the bows, had missed it, but not surprisingly: it was coming at them straight out of the eye of the sun. McKinnon’s sensitive ears must have picked up the faraway drone of the engine. How he had managed to detect it above the constant flow of Miss Plenderleith’s talk and the steady putt-putt of their own engine Nicolson couldn’t imagine. Even now he himself could hear nothing.
Nicolson drew back, glanced over at the captain. Findhorn was lying on his side, either asleep or in a coma. There was no time to waste finding out which.
“Get the sail down, Bo’sun,” he said quickly. “Gordon, give him a hand. Quickly, now. Fourth?”
“Sir?” Vannier was pale, but looked eager and steady enough.
“The guns. One each for yourself, the brigadier, the bo’sun, Van Effen, Walters and myself.” He looked at Farnholme. “There’s some sort of automatic carbine there, sir. You know how to handle it?”
“I certainly do!” Pale blue eyes positively gleaming, Farnholme stretched out a hand for the carbine, cocked the bolt with one expert flick of his fingers and cradled the gun in his arms, glaring hopefully at the approaching plane: the old war-horse sniffing the scent of battle and loving it. Even in that moment of haste Nicolson found time to marvel at the complete transformation from the early afternoon: the man who had scuttled thankfully into the safe refuge of the pantry might never have existed. It was incredible, but there it was: far back in his mind Nicolson had a vague suspicion that the brigadier was just too consistent in his inconsistencies, that a purposeful but well-concealed pattern lay at the root of all his odd behaviour. But it was only a suspicion, he couldn’t make sense of it and maybe he was reading into Farnholme’s strange, see-saw conduct something that didn’t exist. Whatever the explanation, now was not the time to seek it.
“Get your gun down,” Nicolson said urgently. “All of you. Keep them hidden. The rest of you flat on the boards, as low down as you can get.” He heard the boy’s outraged wail of protest as he was pulled down beside the nurse and deliberately forced all thought of him out of his mind. The aircraft — a curious looking seaplane of a type he had never seen before — was still heading straight for them, perhaps half a mile distant now. Losing height all the time, it was coming in very slowly: that type of plane was not built for speed.
It was banking now, beginning to circle the lifeboats, and Nicolson watched it through his binoculars. On the fuselage the emblem of the rising sun glinted as the plane swung first to the south and then to the east. A lumbering, clumsy plane, Nicolson thought, good enough for low-speed reconnaissance, but that was about all. And then Nicolson remembered the three Zeros that had circled indifferently overhead as they had abandoned the burning Viroma and all at once he had a conviction that amounted to complete certainty.
“You can put your guns away,” he said quietly. “And you can all sit up. This character isn’t after our lives. The Japs have plenty of bombers and fighters to make a neat, quick job of us. If they wanted to finish us off, they wouldn’t have sent an old carthorse of a seaplane that has more than an even chance of being shot down itself. They’d have sent the fighters and bombers.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Farnholme’s blood was roused, and he was reluctant to abandon the idea of lining the Japanese ‘plane up over the sights of his carbine. “I wouldn’t trust the beggars an inch!”
“Who would?” Nicolson agreed. “But I doubt whether this fellow has more than a machine-gun.” The seaplane was still circling, still at the same circumspect distance. “My guess is they want us, but they want us alive, lord only knows why. This bloke here, as the Americans would say, is just keeping us on ice.” Nicolson had spent too many years in the Far East not to have heard, in grisly detail, of Japanese atrocities and barbaric cruelties during the Chinese war and knew that, for an enemy civilian, death was a pleasant, a desirable end compared to being taken prisoner by them. “Why we should be all that important to them I can’t even begin to guess. Just let’s count our blessings and stay alive a little longer,”
“I agree with the chief officer.” Van Effen had already stowed away his gun. “This plane is just — how do you say- — keeping tabs on us. He’ll leave us alone, Brigadier, “don’t you worry about that.”
“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t.” Farnholme brought his carbine into plain view. “No reason then why I shouldn’t have a pot at him. Dammit all, he’s an enemy, isn’t he?” Farnholme was breathing hard. “A bullet in his engine——”
“You’ll do no such thing, Foster Farnholme.” Miss Plenderleith’s voice was cold, incisive and imperious. “You’re behaving like an idiot, an irresponsible child. Put that gun down at once.” Farnholme was already wilting under her glare and the lash of her tongue. “Why kick a wasp’s nest? You fire at him and the next thing you know he loses his temper and fires at us and half of us are dead. Unfortunately there’s no way of guaranteeing that you’ll be among that half.”
Nicolson struggled to keep his face straight. Where their journey would end he had no idea, but as long as it lasted the violent antipathy between Farnholme and Miss Plenderleith promised to provide plenty of light entertainment: no one had yet heard them speak a civil word to each other.
“Now, then, Constance.” The brigadier’s voice was half truculent, half placating. “You’ve no right—–”
“Don’t you ‘Constance’ me,” she said icily. “Just put that gun away. None of us wishes to be sacrificed on the altar of your belated valour and misplaced martial ardour.” She gave him the benefit of a cold, level stare, then turned ostentatiously away. The subject was closed and Farnholme suitably crushed. “You and the brigadier — you’ve known each other for some time?” Nicolson ventured.
For a moment she transferred her glacial stare to Nicolson, and he thought he had gone too far. Then she pressed her lips together and nodded. “A long time. For me, far too long. He had his own regiment in Singapore, years before the war, but I doubt whether they ever saw him. He practically lived in the Bengal Club. Drunk, of course. AE the time.”
“By heaven, madam!” Farnholme shouted. His bristly white eyebrows were twitching furiously. “If you were a man——”
“Oh, do be quiet,” she interrupted wearily. “When you repeat yourself so often, Foster, it becomes downright nauseating.”
Farnholme muttered angrily to himself, but everybody’s attention was suddenly transferred to the plane. The engine note had deepened, and for one brief moment Nicolson thought it was coming in to attack, but realised almost at once that its circle round the boats was widening, if anything. The seaplane had cut its engine booster, but only for extra power for climb. It was still circling, but rising steadily all the time, making a laborious job of it, but nonetheless climbing. At about five thousand feet it levelled off and began to cruise round in great circles four or five miles in diameter.
“Now what do you think he’s done that for?” It was Findhorn talking, his voice stronger and clearer than it had been at any time since he had been wounded. “Very curious, don’t you think, Mr. Nicolson?”
Nicolson smiled at him. “Thought you were still asleep, sir. How do you feel now?”
“Hungry and thirsty. Ah, thank you, Miss Plenderleith.” He stretched out his hand for a cup, winced at the sudden pain the movement caused him, then looked again at Nicolson. “You haven’t answered my question.”