The tension was becoming intolerable. The big gun, Nicolson knew, couldn’t depress far enough to reach the boat, but he had vague memories of stories told him by naval officers of the almost decapitating effects of a naval gun fired just above one’s head. Perhaps the blast of the concussion would be fatal to those directly beneath, there was no way of knowing. Suddenly, silently, he began to curse his own stupidity and turned quickly to Willoughby.
“Start the engine up, Bo’sun. Then reverse — fast as you can. The conning-tower can block off that gun if we—–”
The words were lost, obliterated in the roar of the firing gun. It wasn’t a roar, really, but a flat, violent whiplash crack that stabbed savagely at the eardrums and almost stunned in its intensity. A long red tongue of flame flickered evilly out of the mouth of the barrel, reaching down almost to the boat itself. The shell smashed into the sea, throwing up a fine curtain of spray and a spout of water that reached fifty feet up into the sky, and then the sound had died, the smoke had cleared, and Nicolson, desperately shaking a dazed head, knew that they were alive, that the Japanese were frantically trying to load again, knew that the time had come.
“Right, Brigadier.” He could see Farnholme heaving himself to his feet. “Wait till I give the word.” He looked up swiftly towards the bows as a rifle boomed.
“Missed him.” Van EfEen was disgusted. “An officer looked over the edge of the conning-tower just now.”
“Keep your gun lined up,” Nicolson ordered. He could hear the boy wailing with fear and knew that the blast of the big gun must have terrified him: his face twisted savagely as he shouted to Vannier. “Fourth! The signal set. A couple of red hand flares and heave them into the conning-tower. That’ll keep ’em busy.” He was listening all the time to the movements of the gun crew. “All of you — watch the tower and the fore and aft hatches.”
Perhaps another five seconds passed and then Nicolson heard the sound he had been waiting for — the scrape of a shell in the breech and the block swinging solidly home. “Now!” he called sharply.
Farnhome didn’t even bother to raise the gun to his shoulder but fired with the stock under his arm, seemingly without taking any aim whatsoever. He didn’t need to, he was even better than he had claimed to be. He ripped off perhaps five shots, no more, deflected them all down the barrel of the big gun then dropped to the bottom of the lifeboat like a stone as the last bullet found the percussion nose of the shell and triggered off the detonation. Severe enough in sound and shock at such close range, the explosion of the bursting shell inside the breech was curiously muffled, although the effects were spectacular enough. The whole big gun lifted off its mounting and flying pieces of the shattered metal clanged viciously against the conning-tower and went whistling over the sea, ringing the submarine in an erratic circle of splashes. The gun-crew must have died unknowing: enough T.N.T. to blow up a bridge had exploded within arm’s length of their faces.
“Thank you, Brigadier.” Nicolson was on his feet again, forcing his voice to steadiness. “My apologies for all I ever said about you. Full ahead, Bo’sun.” A couple of sputtering crimson hand flares went arching through the air and landed safely inside the conning-tower, silhouetting the coaming against a fierce red glow. “Well done, Fourth. You’ve saved the day today.”
“Mr. Nicolson?”
“Sir?” Nicolson glanced down at the captain.
“Wouldn’t it be better, perhaps, if we stayed here a little longer? No one dare show his head through the hatches or over the tower. In ten or fifteen minutes it’ll be dark enough for us to reach that island there without the beggars taking pot-shots at us all the time.”
“Afraid that wouldn’t do, sir.” Nicolson was apologetic. “Right now the lads inside there are shocked and stunned, but pretty soon someone’s going to start thinking, and as soon as he does we can look for a shower of hand grenades. They can shuck them into the boat without having to show a finger — and even one would finish us.”
“Of course, of course.” Findhom sank back wearily on his bench. “Carry on, Mr. Nicolson.”
Nicolson took the tiller, came hard round with both lifeboats through a hundred and eighty degrees, circled round the slender, fish-tail stern of the submarine while four men with guns in their hands watched the decks unblinkingly, and slowed down just abaft the submarine’s bridge to allow Farnholme to smash the A.A. gun’s delicate firing mechanism with a long, accurate burst from his automatic carbine. Captain Findhorn nodded in slow realisation.
“Exit their siege gun. You think of everything, Mr. Nicolson.”
“I hope so, sir.” Nicolson shook his head. “I hope to God I do.”
The island was perhaps half-a-mile distant from the submarine. A quarter of the way there Nicolson stooped, brought up one of the lifeboat’s two standard Wessex distress signal floats, ripped away the top disc seal, ignited it by tearing off the release fork and immediately threw it over the stern, just wide enough to clear Siran’s boat. As soon as it hit the water it began to give off a dense cloud of orange-coloured smoke, smoke that hung almost without moving in the windless twilight, an impenetrable screen against the enemy. A minute or two later bullets from the submarine began to cut through the orange smoke, whistling overhead or splashing into the water around them, but none came near enough to do any damage; the Japanese were firing at random and in blind anger. Four minutes after the first smoke float, now fizzling to extinction, had been thrown overboard the second one followed it, and long before it, too, had burnt out they had beached their boats and landed safely on the island.
CHAPTER NINE
IT HARDLY deserved the name of island. An islet, perhaps, but no more. Oval in shape, lying almost due east and west, it was no more than three hundred yards long, and about a hundred and fifty from north to south. It wasn’t a perfect oval, however: about a hundred yards along from the apex the sea had cut deep notches on both sides, at points practically opposite one another, so that the islet was all but bisected. It was in the southerly bight — Nicolson had taken the precaution of rounding the island before landing — that they had beached their boats and moored them to a couple of heavy stones.
The narrow end of the island, east beyond the bights, was low and rocky and bare, but the west had some vegetation-scrub bushes and stunted lalang grass — and rose to a height of perhaps fifty feet in the middle. On the southern side of this hill there was a little hollow, hardly more than a shelf, about half-way up the slope, and it was towards this that Nicolson urged the passengers as soon as the boat had grounded. The Captain and Corporal Fraser had to be carried, but it was only a short trip and within ten minutes of the boats’ grounding the entire party had taken refuge in the hollow, surrounded by all the food, water supplies and portable equipment, even the oars and the crutches.
A light breeze had sprung up with the going down of the sun, and clouds were slowly filling up the sky from the north-4east, blanketing the early evening stars, but it was still light enough for Nicolson to use his glasses. He stared through them for almost two minutes, then laid them down, rubbing his eyes. He was aware, without being able to see, that everybody in the hollow was watching him anxiously — all except the boy who was bundled up in a blanket and already drowsing off to sleep.
“Well?” Findhorn broke the silence. ,
“They’re moving round the western tip of the island, sir, Pretty close inshore, too.”
“I can’t hear them.”
“Must be using their batteries. Why, I don’t know. Just because they can’t see us it doesn’t mean that we can’t see them. It’s not all that dark.”
Van Effen cleared his throat. And what do you think the next move is going to be, Mr. Nicolson?”
“No idea. It’s up to them, I’m afraid. If they had either their big gun or A.A. gun left they could blast us out of here in two minutes.” Nicolson gestured at the low ridge that bounded the hollow to the south, barely visible in the gloom even six feet away. “But with a little luck I think that’ll stop rifle bullets.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Time enough to worry about that when it happens,” Nicolson answered shortly. “Maybe they’ll try to land men at various points and surround us. Maybe they’ll try a frontal attack.” He had the glasses to his eyes again. “Whatever happens they can’t just go home and say they left us here — they’d get their heads in their hands, perhaps literally. Either that or hara-kiri all over the shop.”