‘I am quite prepared to consider anything you suggest, Lieutenant.’ Aritsu successfully hid the eagerness in his voice, but Hamilton knew the reaction was that of a drowning man clutching at a straw. And, in the circumstances, it was an apt analogy. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if considering his plan.
‘I reckon we could use Rapier as a sort of sea anchor. If we pass a couple of six-inch hawsers around the conning tower and I submerge to say, thirty feet, I could drag your bows around in half the time it would take you using your engines and rudder. Then, having got you pointing into the wind, Rapier could act as an anchor. What’s your weight?’
‘535 tons standard◦– probably less at the moment as our bunkers are half-empty.’
‘Excellent! Rapier displaces just under a thousand tons in diving trim. If I poke my motors up to full power, I reckon I could just about hold you until the typhoon blows itself out.’
‘It’ll never work,’ Ottershaw interjected before Aritsu could answer. He had learned his seamanship at Dartmouth and he did not believe in unorthodox solutions. Hamilton’s ideas were all very well in theory, but practice would be another matter. It was just the sort of foolhardy scheme he would have expected from this crazy submariner.
‘Perhaps it won’t,’ Aritsu agreed. ‘But it’s worth trying. And I can see no alternative.’
Hamilton grinned, patted the Commander on the shoulder reassuringly, and swung himself over the rail. Ottershaw followed and moments later they were huddled in the sternsheets of the open motorboat, as it throttled to full power and eased away from the destroyer’s beam.
The epicenter of the storm was still some thirty minutes away, but the waters of the bay were already being whipped to a frenzy of flying spray by the rising wind. The two British officers were quickly soaked to the skin as the coxswain of the motorboat swung the bows towards the distant Rapier. Once out of the protective lee of the Suma, the mounting strength of the sea swept the cockleshell boat to starboard and it pitched violently as Shinikani fought the controls to maintain course.
‘You must be bloody mad, Nick,’ Ottershaw grumbled as a wave broke against the side of the boat and threw several gallons of unpleasantly cold water into his lap. ‘After all the things you’ve said about the Japanese, I’m surprised you’re prepared to help them. If I had my way they could bloody well drown.’
Hamilton ducked as another wave struck the motor boat squarely on the beam and kicked it to port. He wiped the water from his face and grinned. ‘You’ve got to admit one thing, Harry. I succeeded in getting you away from Aritsu. And saved you from making that apology.’
‘We’d have got away in any case,’ Ottershaw objected. He clung to the gunwales as the motor boat pitched and yawed. It was worse than riding on a giant roller-coaster, and, for once in his life, he felt the insidious pangs of seasickness. Exposed to the full blast of the gale now roaring through the entrance to the bay, the motorboat wallowed unsteadily and then dug its bows into the foam-flecked seas. The well-deck was several inches deep in water, and Heichiro started operating the manual bailer as the mechanical pumps failed to cope with the inrush. ‘If you’d have left when Aritsu first suggested it we might have had a more comfortable ride home. But no◦– you have to hang around until the weather conditions made things virtually impossible.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And why the hell did you say this was bad holding ground?’
Shinikani spun the wheel sharply to avoid being pooped by a towering wall of water coming up from astern, threw the motorboat into the trough that followed and then allowed it to climb the next wave. There was a loud crash and a shuddering jolt as the little boat fell into the trough beyond but, apparently undeterred by the punishment he was inflicting on the vessel, the Japanese coxswain kept the throttles wide open and continued steering towards the submarine.
‘I’m quite friendly with a Portuguese merchant in Macao,’ Hamilton explained as the boat corkscrewed from wave top to wave top. ‘He’s taught me a lot of things about the East that I didn’t know before. The worst thing that can happen to an Oriental is to lose “face”, and that’s precisely what I’m planning for our friend Aritsu. I had to hold on to the last moment in order to convince him that nothing could save his ship. And by then he was so shit-scared he never thought of checking the facts on his own charts. As it is, I reckon we can save him. And, if I do, the Japanese Navy is going to lose “face” to us in a big way-enough, probably, to make up for all those damned apologies we’ve been forced to make recently.’
By some unexplained miracle, Shinikani brought the motorboat alongside Rapier without mishap although, for one horrifying moment, Hamilton thought the wind would sweep them hard against the submarine’s sharp steel bows. But, with a deft touch of the helm, the Japanese coxswain swung the motorboat under the sheltering lee of the hull. The deck party quickly threw a line to Heichiro, who grabbed it and wound it tightly around the fo’c’sle mooring cleat. Hamilton and Ottershaw struggled up the sloping, wave-swept ballast tank like mountaineers scaling the Matterhorn in a blizzard. The smooth steel plating offered no footholds and their leather shoes slipped and slithered on the weed covered surface. Morgan and one of the deckhands came to the rescue and moments later both officers had been hauled up to the foredeck.
Having delivered his passengers, Shinikani ordered Heichiro to let go of the rope, opened the throttle and circled away from the submarine. The strength of the wind had rapidly increased in the past few minutes and spray spuming from the tumultuous waves cut visibility to little more than a hundred yards. If the motorboat was not equipped with a compass, Hamilton did not give much for its chances of completing its return trip. He turned away. There was no time to worry about Shinikani and his companion◦– they were expendable. He was after bigger fish!
‘You’ve no chance of getting back to Firefly,’ he shouted to Ottershaw. ‘Best if you stay aboard Rapier until the typhoon’s blown itself out.’
Hamilton was clearly in no mood to be trifled with and, despite his senior rank, the gunboat’s skipper acquiesced without argument.
‘Morgan! Cut the anchor cable! Jackson! Go for’ard and release the bow lines. Then all of you get below at the double!’ Hamilton cupped his hands as he shouted up to Mannon on the bridge. ‘Full ahead both engines, Number One! Steer towards the destroyer.’
Mannon’s acknowledgement was lost in the shriek of the wind, but Hamilton felt the deck plating vibrating under his feet as the diesels roared into life. Giving Ottershaw a helping hand to climb the rungs of the conning tower, he checked that Morgan and the deck party were safely below and then followed the lieutenant commander to the bridge.
‘There’s a small cove on the north-west side of the bay,’ he told him as he swung himself over the screen. ‘The wind has veered to the south-east and the promontory will act as a wind-shield. If Firefly can get to the cove and under the lee of the hills she should be able to ride out the storm fairly comfortably.’
‘Sounds OK to me, Nick. The old girl certainly hasn’t got enough power to head into the wind and reach open sea. Can you pass a signal to my Number One?’
Hamilton nodded and called the yeoman of signals over, dictated a brief message and, a few seconds later, the submarine’s Aldis lamp was flashing instructions to the gunboat.
As Rapier came out from under the lee of Firefly’s high superstructure the typhoon struck her with savage fury. The sea, lashed by the rising wind, had steepened into ugly, white-crested waves that rolled across the bay like serried ranks of soldier ants, destroying everything that lay in their path. A spume of spray hung like a mist over the angry waves and, peering ahead, Hamilton was relieved to find that Aritsu had switched on Suma’s riding lights.