There was a steely precision about the way Kaptein Denny tacked and tacked again. He himself had the wheel and I tended the sail. But my mind was only half on the tricky operation: at every turn I expected to run into a Sang A search party. Jutta-too, was on constant watch from the bridge.
There was no time to think about the fantastic story Denny had told us. I was continually on the move because at every change of course Ichabo would stream away lumpishly downwind and drag round Gaok's stern. As an example of giving your enemy every chance to cut off your retreat Denny's strategy seemed hard to beat.
But we went on undetected and finally made a ninety degree turn-so close to Doodenstadt's rocks that spray from the breakers was added to the little which carded on to the deck. Now Gaok pointed southwards, hugging the shore, with Ichabo cavorting out to lee at the end of her cable. A thought struck me and I made for the bridge. 'Radar!
Sang A has radar! She'll pick us up for sure!'
'In these conditions? Never!' Denny replied. 'Her radar screen will look like a bead curtain across a bar, with all this stuff flying around. There are enough mica particles in it to thake radar about as effective as a cross-eyed drunk.'
We drove south.
It wasn't more than ten miles to Albatross Rock-but a couple of crabs under sail would have followed a straighter course than Gaok and Ichabo. The Bridge of Magpies showed up. Visibility was so low that its legs appeared to have been amputated. When it disappeared astern I gave up trying to calculate where we were-from the amount of forward movement, sideways drift and wind thrust. It is impossible for me to say, therefore, at what point off the fractured, fissured coast I saw, dead ahead on the sea's surface-the grey thing with rounded sides which looked like an igloo tent, or a hangar-one of those plastic structures which are inflated to give them shape. Only this one was dirty and shiny and wet and there were lighter patches here 178 and there on its bulging sides.
Gaok couldn't miss it the way she was heading. What in he!! was Kaptein Denny doing?
I threw myself off the bridge and roof where I'd been attending the sail and into the wheelhouse below. Jutta was there, staring transfixed at the object in our track. Tut your helm down!' I yelled. 'Down!'
Denny didn't seem to hear and went on gazing forward without turning his head.
I snatched at the wheel-and I looked into the blue barrel of the Taisho.
Tack! Keep away!'
'The rock, man – you'll sink us!'
'Leave it to me. it isn't a rock.
He never got any further because at that moment Gaok's bowsprit pierced the grey bulk. The result was like putting your head inside Big Ben's biggest bell when the hour strikes. The boom stunned the ears and kicked the diaphragm. My resulting nausea wasn't only sound induced. The plasticlooking bubble threw off a flatus which was as sickening as it was unique.
The stench-patch Gaok had to cross wasn't bigger than a cricket field, and it couldn't have taken more than a couple of minutes but it seemed like hours. I was shouting things which I couldn't hear because my eardrums were paralysed, and I was holding Jutta, gagging and retching against me. I lip-read the explanation of the thing-on Kaptein Denny's mouth-'The sound of guns!'
The sea round about was thlck enough to have matched Walewska's oil spill, but once we had lurched clear of the patch and gone far enough to give our ears time to recover, Denny told us what the 'sound of guns'-really was. He'd heard it a score of times before, of course-but to us it made Gousblom's end sound more poignant.
'Jt wasn't guns Gousblom heard but the explosion of gas pockets which are caused by the upwell cell building up. What you saw back there was a small section of the mud floor of the channel which the gas lifts bodily to the surface. Gas is quickly generated by the action of the upwell cell's warm water on billions of minute, decomposing sea creatures on the ocean bed. Pockets form and push the mud upwards into giant balloons. When they reach the surface, where the pressure of the air is less, they explode.'
'If there'd been no "sound of guns" there'd have been no U-160 action,' observed Jutta thoughtfully.
'True. It was luck, fate, call it what you like. It doesn't last for long, Miss Jutta. Gousblom was unlucky enough to be around at the wrong moment. Once cold water starts flowing it kills the process.'
'No lost Book of Tsu. No Kaptein Denny,' she added.
'Sometimes even I think of myself as a gamat fisherman. Denny-Denzo.' That triggered off something inside him and he spoke and steered and never looked anywhere but ahead while Gaok spooked her way through the sandstorm towards Albatross Rock.
'The first Admiral Denzo lived about 800 years ago,'
Denny began. 'He fought for a Japanese emperor named Minamoto. Denzo won a great sea battle against the Taira clan and his victory gave Minamoto control over the whole of Japan. It is the first occasion on which there is a record of the Book of Tsu. Denzo is known to have based his successful strategy on its precepts. In recognition of his victory Minamoto appointed Demo to be Keeper of the Book of Tsu. He also conferred a hereditary title on him. It's been in our family ever since:
Then he said quietly, and not at all theatrically, and with no pose, 'Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice.'
He raised the gun-hand which had gone out at such high stretch at Mild. 'I am the Master. I have my duty. The Book of Tsu must never faJl into the hands of Emmermann and Kenryo and Mild.'
'Pearl Harbour – Tsushima,. The story's full of gaps.' The hoarseness in my own voice surprised me.
'Yes, it is. I'm not telling you that the Book of Tsu which won Demo his victory was the same as the one used at Pearl Harbour and Tsushima. It wasn't. Over the centuries after Minamoto the Book of Tsu became debased until it was regarded as a lot of mumbo-jumbo, simply a collection of incomprehensible medieval magic spells. An elaborate ritual – over which the Master presided – was built up and it became more important than the Book itself. Its meaning was almost totally obscured by the beginning of the twentieth century.
'Then my grandfather, who lived at the time of the Meiji Revolution which made Japan into a modern state, revised and rewrote the Book of Tsu in terms of modern naval concepts. That-was about twenty years before the Battle of Tsushima. Admiral Togo based his victorious strategy on this revamped, dynamic version of the Book of Tsu. So did Yamamoto at Pearl Harbour. He and the Japanese Naval Staff were already planning and playing war gathes five years before the Pacific War broke out. Yamamoto himself tasted victory at Tsushima. He was there; he lost a couple of fingers from a shellburst.'
'J feel like a spacecraft starting to come back to the everyday things on earth-' I said.
'I haven't got past the shock of re-entry yet.' Jutta looked it, too.
Kaptein Denny went on: 'Jt's probably easier for the Oriental than the Western mind to accept that one can receive valid guidance from extra-sensory forces. Maybe it's something to do with the ritual or the symbols of the Book of Tsu, which amuse and project the unconscious. Who knows? It might prove a rewarding modern study in ESP. All I can say is that it worked for Togo and Yamamoto.'
The more you tell us the more unlikely it seems that the Master of the Equinoxes should find himself as tar away from his hereditary shrines and what-have-you as the Sperr gebiet,' I said.
'Not when you reaJize that Luderitz has a direct associat ion with the Battle of Tsushima. It was at Luderitz that Admiral Rozhdesvensky coaled the Russian fleet for the last time before it sailed to destruction by Togo's guns at Tsushima. You'll find his signature in an old visilors' book at the port.'