South by Java Head. Alistair MacLean
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above their heads came the occasional murmur of voices, or the shuffling of aimless, wandering feet. Up there were the gunners who manned the two wheelhouse top Hotchkisses, .5s well spaced on each side of the starboard compass platform teak screen. Old guns these, very old and feeble and inaccurate, good only for boosting the morale of those who had never had to use them against an enemy. The suicide seats, these two gun positions were called: the exposed wheel-house top, highest point of the bridge superstructure, always held priority for strafing attacks on tankers. The gunners knew this, and they were only human: they had been unhappy, increasingly restless, for days now.
But the fidgety unease of the gunners, the quartermaster’s hands moving gently on the spokes of the wheel—these were only small, insignificant sounds that punctuated the strange, hushed silence that lay over the Viroma, an enveloping, encompassing silence, thick, cocoon-like, almost tangible. And the little sounds came and went and left the silence deeper, more oppressive than before.
It was the silence that comes with great heat and the climbing humidity that spills out sweat over a man’s arms and body with every mouthful of liquid he drinks. It was the dead, flat silence that lies over the China Sea while the gathering storm bides its time beyond the horizon. It was the silence that comes upon men when they have not slept for a long, long time, and they are very tired. But, above all, it was the silence that comes with waiting. That kind of waiting where a man’s nerves are stretched out on a rack, and every hour more of waiting is another turn of the rack, and if the waiting doesn’t end soon the rack will turn too far and the nerves tear and sunder with the strain—but if the waiting does end then that will be even worse for it will be the end not only of the waiting, it will almost certainly be the end of everything.
The men of the Viroma had been waiting for a long time now, Or perhaps not such a long time—it was only a week since the Viroma, with a false funnel, dummy ventilators, the newly painted name of Resistencia and flying the flag of the Argentine republic, had rounded the Northern tip of Sumatra and steamed into the Malacca Straits in broad daylight. But a week has seven days, every day twenty-four hours and every hour sixty minutes. Even a minute can be a long time when you are waiting for something which must inevitably happen, when you know that the laws of chance are operating more and more inexorably against you, that the end cannot be much longer delayed. Even a minute can be a long, long time when the first bomb or the first torpedo may be only seconds away, and you have ten thousand, four hundred tons of fuel oil and high octane gasoline beneath your feet …
The telephone above the flag locker shrilled jarringly, insistently, cutting knife-like through the leaden silence on the bridge. Vannier, slight, brown-haired, an officer of only ten weeks standing, was nearest to it. He whirled round, startled, knocked over the binoculars on the locker-top behind him, and fumbled the receiver off its hook. Even through the tan the red flush could be seen creeping up through neck and face.
“Bridge here. What is it?” The voice was meant to be crisp, authoritative. It didn’t quite come off. He listened for a few moments, said thank you, hung up and turned round to find Nicolson standing beside him.
“Another distress signal,” he said quickly. Nicolson’s cold blue eyes always made him feel flustered. “Up north somewhere.”
“Up north somewhere.” Nicolson repeated the words, his tone almost conversational, but carrying an undertone that made Vannier squirm. “What position? What ship?” There was a sharp edge to Nicolson’s voice now.
“I—I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
Nicolson looked at him for a long second, turned away, reached down the phone and began to crank the generator handle. Captain Findhorn beckoned to Vannier and waited until the boy had walked hesitantly across to his corner of the bridge.
“You should have asked, you know,” the captain said pleasantly. “Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think it necessary, sir.” Vannier was uncomfortable, on the defensive. “It’s our fourth call today. You—you ignored the others, so I——”
“True enough,” Findhorn agreed. “It’s a question of priorities, boy. I’m not going to risk a valuable ship, a priceless cargo and the lives of fifty men on the off-chance of picking up a couple of survivors from an inter-island steamer. But this might have been a troopship, or a cruiser. I know it’s not, but it might have been. And it might have been in a position where we could have given some help without sticking our necks out too far. All improbable ‘ifs’ and ‘mights’, but we must know where she is and what she is before we make a decision.” Findhorn smiled and touched the gold-braided epaulettes on his shoulders. “You know what these are for?”
“You make the decisions,” Vannier said stiffly. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Forget it, boy. But one thing you might remember—to call Mr. Nicolson ‘sir’ once in a while. It’s—ah—expected.”
Vannier flushed and turned away. “Sorry again, sir. I don’t usually forget. I’m—well, I think I’m just a little bit tired and edgy, sir.”
“We all are,” Findhorn said quietly. “And not a little bit, either. But Mr. Nicolson isn’t —he never is.” He raised his voice. “Well, Mr. Nicolson?”
Nicolson hung up the receiver and turned round.
“Vessel bombed, burning, possibly sinking,” he said briefly. “0.45 N, 104.24 E. That makes it the Southern entrance to the Rhio channel. Name of the vessel uncertain. Walters says the message came through very fast, very clear at first, but quickly deteriorated into crazy nonsense. He thinks the operator was seriously injured and finally collapsed over his table and key, for he finished up with a continuous send—it’s still coming through. Name of the ship, as far as Walters could make out, was the Kenny Danke.
“Never heard of it. Strange he didn’t send his international call-sign. Nothing big, anyway. Mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing, sir.” Nicolson shook his head, turned to Vannier. “Look it up in the Register anyway, please. Then look through the K’s. Obviously the wrong name.” He paused for a moment, the cold blue eyes remote, distant, then turned again to Vannier. “Look up the Kerry Dancer. I think it must be that.”
Vannier riffled through the pages. Findhorn looked at his chief officer, eyebrows raised a fraction.
Nicolson shrugged. “A fair chance, sir, and it makes sense. N and R are very close in Morse. So are C and K. A sick man could easily trade them—even a trained man. If he was sick enough.”
“You’re right, sir.” Vannier smoothed out a page of the directory. “The Kerry Dancer, 540 tons, is listed here. Clyde, 1922. Sulaimiya Trading Company——”
“I know them,” Findhorn interrupted. “An Arab company, Chinese backed, sailing out of Macassar. They’ve seven or eight of these small steamers. Twenty years ago they had only a couple of dhows—that was about the time they gave up legitimate trading as a bad business and went in for the fancy stuff—guns, opium, pearls, diamonds, and little of that legally come by. Plus a fair amount of piracy on the side.”
”No tears over the Kerry Dancer!”
“No tears over the Kerry Dancer, Mr. Nicolson. Course 130 and hold it there.” Captain Findhorn moved through the screen door on to the port wing of the door. The incident was closed.
“Captain!”
Findhorn halted, turned round unhurriedly and looked curiously at Evans. Evans was the duty quartermaster, dark, wiry, thin-faced and with tobacco stained teeth. His hands rested lightly on the wheel, and he was looking straight ahead.
“Something on your mind, Evans?”
“Yes, sir. The Kerry Dancer was lying in the roads last night.” Evans glanced at him for a moment then stared ahead again. “A Blue Ensign boat, sir.”
“What!” Findhorn was jerked out of his normal equanimity.