South By Java Head (7 page)

Nor was he worried about himself. Captain Findhorn had nothing left to worry about -- literally: he had a great deal to look back upon, but nothing to look forward to. The senior captain of the British-Arabian Tanker Company, neither the sea nor his employers had anything more to offer him than two more years of command, retirement, and a sufficient pension. He had nowhere to go when he retired: his home for the past eight years, a modest bungalow off the Bukit Timor road, just outside the town of Singapore, had been destroyed by bombs in mid-January. His twin sons, who had always maintained that anyone who went to sea for a livelihood wanted his head examined, had joined the R.A.F. at the outbreak of war, and died in their Hurricanes, one over Flanders, one over the English Channel. His wife, Ellen, had survived the second son for only a few weeks. Cardiac failure, the doctor had said, which was a neat enough medical equivalent for a broken heart. Captain Findhorn had nothing to worry about, just nothing in the world -- as far as he himself was concerned.
But selfishness had no root, no hold in Captain Findhorn's nature, and the emptiness of all that lay ahead had not robbed him of his concern for those for whom life still held mudh. He thought of the men under his command, men not like himself but men with parents and children, wives and sweethearts, and he wondered what moral justification, if any, he had had for risking the life of non-combatants in turning back towards the enemy. He wondered, too, about the oil beneath his feet again, about his justification, if any, for hazarding a priceless cargo so desperately needed by his country -- the thought of the loss to his company he dismissed with the mental equivalent of an indifferent shrug. Lastly, and most deeply of all, he thought about his chief officer of the past three years, John Nicolson.
He did not know and he did not understand John Nicolson. Some woman might, some day, but he doubted whether any man ever would. Nicolson was a man with two personalities, neither of them in any way directly connected with his professional duties, or the manner of the performance of them, which was exceptional: next in line for command in the Anglo-Arabian fleet, Nicolson was regarded by Captain Findhorn as the finest officer he had had serve under him in his thirty-three years as master; unvaryingly competent when competence was called for, brilliant when competence was not enough, John Nicolson never made a mistake. His efficiency was almost inhuman. Inhuman, Findhorn thought, that was it, that was the other side of his character. Nicolson normally was courteous, considerate, even, humorously affable: and then some strange sea-change would come over him and he became aloof, remote, cold -- and above all ruthless.
There had to be a link, a meeting point between the two Nicolsons, something that triggered off the transition from one personality to another. What it was Captain Findhorn did not know. He did not even know the nature of the slender bond between Nicolson and himself, he was not close to Nicolson, but he believed he was closer than anyone he knew. It could have been the fact that they were both widowers, but it was not that. It should have been that, for the parallels were striking -- both wives had Jived in Singapore, Nicolson's on her first and his on her second five-year tour of duty in the Far East: both had died within a week of each other, and within a hundred yards of each other. Mrs. Findhorn had died at home grieving: Caroline Nicolson had died in a high-speed car smash almost outside the white-painted gates of Captain Findhorn's bungalow, victim of a drunken maniac who had escaped without as much as a single scratch.
Captain Findhorn straightened up, tightened the towel round his neck, wiped some salt from his eyes and lips and glanced at Nicolson, farther out on the wing of the bridge. He was quite upright, seeking no shelter behind the venturi dodger, hands resting lightly on the side of the bridge, the intense blue eyes slowly quartering the dusk-blurred horizon, his face impassive, indifferent. Wind and rain, the crippling heat of the Persian Gulf or the bitter sleet storms of the Scheldt in January were all the same to John Nicolson. He was immune to them, he remained always indifferent, impassive. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
The wind was backing now, slowly, very slowly, and as steadily increasing in strength, the brief tropical twilight was almost over, but the seas were as milky-white as ever, stretching away into the gloom. Findhorn could see their gleaming phosphorescence off to port and starboard, curving in a great heaving horseshoe round the stern, but he could see nothing for-ard. The Viroma was now thrusting north dead in the eye of the gale-force wind, and the heavy driving rain, strangely cold after the heat of the day, was sweeping almost horizontally fore and aft across the decks and the bridge, numbing his face with a thousand little lances, filling his eyes with pain and tears. Even with eyes screwed tight to the narrowest slits, the rain still stung and blinded: they were blind men groping in a blind world and the end of the world was where they stood.
Captain Findhorn shook his head impatiently, an impatience compounded equally of anxiety and exasperation, and called to Nicolson. There was no sign that he had been heard. Findhorn cupped his hands to his mouth and called again, realised that what little of his voice was not being swept away by the wind was being drowned by the crash of the plunging bows and the thin high whine in the halyards and rigging. He moved across to where Nicolson stood, tapped him on the shoulder, jerked his head towards the wheelhouse and made for there himself. Nicolson followed him. As soon as he was inside Findhorn waited for a convenient trough in the sea, eased forward the sliding door with the downward pitch of the ship, and secured it. The change from driving rain, wind and the roaring of the sea to dryness, warmth and an almost miraculous quiet was so abrupt, so complete, that it took mind and body seconds to accustom themselves to the change.
Findhorn towelled his head dry, moved across to the port for-ard window and peered through the Clear View Screen -- a circular, inset plate or glass band-driven at high speed by an electric motor. Under normal conditions of wind and rain centrifugal force is enough to keep the screen clear and provide reasonable visibility. There was nothing normal about the conditions that night and the worn driving belt, f 01 which they had no spare, was slipping badly. Findhorn grunted in disgust and turned away.
"Well, Mr. Nicolson, what do you make of it?"
"The same as you, sir." He wore no hat and the blond hair was plastered over head and forehead. "Can't see a thing ahead."
"That wasn't what I meant."
"I know." Nicolson smiled, braced himself against a sudden, vicious pitch, against the jarring shock that shook the windows of the wheelhouse. "This is the first time we've been safe in the past week."
Findhorn nodded. "You're probably right. Not even a maniac would come out looking for us on a night like this. Valuable hours of safety, Johnny," he murmured quietly, "and we would be better employed putting even more valuable miles between ourselves and brother Jap."
Nicolson looked at him, looked away again. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but Findhorn knew something at least of what he must be thinking, and swore quietly to himself. He was making it as easy as possible -- Nicolson had only to agree with him.
"The chances of there being any survivors around are remote," Findhorn went on. "Look at the night. Our chances of picking anybody up are even more remote. Again, look at the night -- and as you say yourself we can't see a damn' tiling ahead. And the chances of piling ourselves up on a reef -- or even a fair-sized island -- are pretty high." He looked out a side window at the driving fury of the rain and the low, scudding cloud. "We haven't a hope of a star-sight While this lot lasts."
"Our chances are pretty thin," Nicolson agreed. He lit a cigarette, automatically returned the spent match to its box, watched the blue smoke eddying lazily in the soft light of the binnacle, then looked up at Findhorn. "How much do you give for the chances of any survivors on the Kerry Dancer, sir?"
Findhorn looked into the ice-cold blue of the eyes, looked away again, said nothing.
"If they took to the beats before the weather broke down, they'll be on an island now," Nicolson went on quietly. "There are dozens of them around. If they took to the boats later, they're gone long ago -- a dozen of these coasters couldn't muster one regulation lifeboat between them. If there are any survivors we can save, they'll still be on the Kerry Dancer. A needle in a haystack, I know, but a bigger needle than a raft or a baulk of wood."
Captain Findhorn cleared his throat. "I appreciate all this, Mr. Nicolson------"
"She'll be drifting more or less due south," Nicolson interrupted. He looked up from the chart on the table. "Two knots, maybe three. Heading for the Merodong Straits-bound to pile up later tonight. We could come round to port a bit, still give Mesana Island a good offing and have a quick looksee."
"You're assuming an awful lot," Findhorn said slowly.
"I know. I'm assuming that she wasn't sunk hours ago." Nicolson smiled briefly, or maybe it was only a grimace, it was very dark in the wheelhouse now. "Perhaps I'm feeling fey tonight, sir. Perhaps it's my Scandinavian ancestry coming out... An hour and a half should get us there. Even in this head sea, not more than two."
"All right, damn you!" Findhorn said irritably. "Two hours, and then we turn back." He glanced at the luminous figures on his wrist-watch. "Six twenty-five now. The deadline is eight-thirty." He spoke briefly to the helmsman, turned and followed Nicolson, who was holding the screen door open for him against the wild lurching of the Viroma. Outside the howling wind was a rushing, irresistible wall that pinned them helplessly, for seconds on end, against the after end of the bridge, fighting for their breath: the rain was no longer rain but a deluge, driving horizontally, sleet-cold, razor edged, that seemed to lay exposed foreheads and cheeks open to the bone: the wind in the rigging was no longer a whine but an ululating scream, climbing off the register, hurtful to the ear. The Viroma was moving in on the heart of the typhoon.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two HOURS, Captain Findhorn had given them, two hours at the outside limit, but it might as well have been two minutes or two days, for all the hope that remained. Everyone knew that, knew that it was just a gesture, maybe to their own consciences, maybe to the memory of a few wounded soldiers, a handful of nurses and a radio operator who had leaned over his transmitting key and died. But still only a hopeless gesture...
They found the Kerry Dancer at twenty-seven minutes past eight, three minutes before the deadline. They found her, primarily, because Nicolson's predictions had been uncannily correct, the Kerry Dancer was almost exactly where he had guessed they would find her and a long, jagged fork of lightning had, for a brief, dazzling moment, illumined the gaunt, burnt-out scarecrow as brightly as the noonday sun. Even then they would never have found her had not the hurricane force of the wind dropped away to the merest whisper, and the blinding rain vanished as suddenly as if someone had turned off a gigantic tap in the heavens.
That there was no miracle about the almost instantaneous transition from the clamour of the storm to this incredible quiet Captain Findhorn was grimly aware. Always, at the heart of a typhoon, lies this oasis of peace. This breathless, brooding hush was no stranger to him -- but on the two or three previous occasions he had had plenty of sea room, could turn where he wished when the going became too bad. But not this tune. To the north, to the west and to the south-west their escape route was blocked off by islands of the archipelago.
They couldn't have entered the heart of the typhoon at a worse time.
And they couldn't have done it at a better time. If anyone lived on the Kerry Dancer conditions for rescue would never be more favourable than this. If anyone lived -- and from what they could see of her in the light of their canal searchlights and the port signalling lamp as they bore slowly down on her, it seemed unlikely. More, it seemed impossible. In the harsh glare of the searchlights she seemed more forlorn, more abandoned than ever, so deep now by the head that the f or'ard well deck had vanished, and the fo'c'sle, like some lonely rock, now awash, now buried deep as the big seas rolled it under -- the wind had gone, the rain had gone, but the seas were almost as high as ever, and even more confused.
Captain Findhorn gazed out silently at the Kerry Dancer his eyes bleak. Caught in a cone of light, broached to and broadside on to the waves, she was rolling sluggishly in the troughs, her centre of gravity pulled right down by the weight of hundreds of tons of water. Dead, he thought to himself, dead if ever a ship was dead but she just won't go. Dead, and that's her ghost, he thought inconsequentially, and ghost-like she seemed, eerie and foreboding with the searchlights shining through the twisted rectangular gaps in her burnt-out upper-works. She reminded him vaguely, tantalisingly, of something, then all of a sudden he had it -- the Death Ship of the Ancient Mariner, with the red, barred sun shining through the skeleton of her timbers. No deader than this one here, he thought grimly. Nothing could have been emptier of life than this.... He became aware that the chief officer was standing just behind his shoulder.
"Well, there she is, Johnny," he murmured "Candidate-elect for the Sargasso Sea, or wherever dead ships go. It's been a nice trip. Let's be getting back."
"Yes, sir." Nicolson didn't seem to have heard him. "Permission to take a boat across, sir."
"No." Findhorn's refusal was flat, emphatic. "We've seen all we want to see."
"We've come back a long way for this." There was no particular inflection in Nicolson's voice. "Vannier, the bo'sun, Ferris, myself and a couple of others. We could make it."
"Maybe you could." Bracing himself against the heavy rolling of the Viroma, Findhorn made his way to the outer edge of the port wing and stared down at the sea. Even jn the lee of the ship, there were still ten or fifteen feet between troughs and wavecrests, the short, steep seas confused and treacherous. "And maybe you couldn't. I don't propose to risk anyone's life just to find that out."
Nicolson said nothing. Seconds passed, then Findhorn turned to him again, the faintest edge of irritation in his voice. "Well, what's the matter. Still feeling -- what do you call it? -- fey? Is that it?" He flung out an impatient arm in the direction of the Kerry Dancer. "Damn it all, man, she's obviously abandoned. Burnt-out and hammered till she looks like a floating colander. Do you honestly think there would be any survivors after she had been through that little lot? And even if there were, they're bound to see our lights. Why aren't they all dancing about the upper deck -- if there's any deck left -- waving their shirts above their heads? Can you tell me that?" Captain Findhorn was being heavily sarcastic.