Hamilton rose slowly to his feet, unscrewed the brass cap of the can, and tilted the container so that the inflammable spirit splattered over the canvas sheet covering Chai Chen’s body. When it was completely empty, he threw it into the scuppers and made his way back to the poop. There was nothing more he could do◦– nothing except to swear revenge on the barbarous savages responsible for the atrocity. The expression on his face was carved from granite as he approached the Rapier’s gunner.
‘Did your men find anyone else aboard, Chief!’
Morgan nodded vaguely towards the bows. ‘Only an old Chinaman. His legs looked like they’d been broken with the butt end of a rifle. He was dead too.’ The Welshman paused for a moment at the memory of Chen Yu’s agonized death mask. ‘What sort of bastards could torture an old man and a girl, sir?’
Hamilton’s face lost none of its grimness. ‘I don’t know, Chief. But if I ever find them…’ He left the threat unfinished. ‘Get your men back to Rapier. I can’t risk staying on the surface any longer.’
Restraining an impulse to go back to the girl, Hamilton walked to the port side of the junk and waited while Morgan and the two sailors jumped on to the submarine’s foredeck. Then, having prised the grappling hook out of the bulwarks, he leapt across the narrow width of water separating the two vessels, and joined them.
‘Get below, Chief and secure the gun hatch. We’ll be diving in a couple of minutes.’ Tossing the hook for Morgan to catch, he made his way unhurriedly down the foredeck, swung himself up the rungs on the outside of the conning tower, and dropped on to the bridge. ‘Stand by to dive … all hands below!’ He bent over the voice pipe as Scott and the look-outs slid into the hatchway and went down the ladder into the control room. ‘Slow astern both motors. Full port rudder. Call all hands to diving stations, Number One.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Standing by.’
As Rapier went astern and backed slowly away from the junk Hamilton walked to the signal locker behind the binnacle, unfastened the watertight door, and took out a Very pistol. Slipping a cartridge into the breach, he snapped it shut, and moved to the starboard, side of the bridge. He waited until the submarine was safely clear and then, aiming carefully at the base of the tall bamboo main mast, he squeezed the trigger.
The signal cartridge hissed across the water and struck a pile of petrol-soaked sacks where it came to rest, buzzing and sizzling like an angry bee as the fuse burned down. The sudden flash of the flare ignited a pool of gasoline in the shadow of the deckhouse, there was a violent explosion, and within seconds the entire deck from poop to bows was a soaring mass of roaring flames. Hamilton lowered the pistol and watched. He was not a religious man but, alone on the bridge with no one to see, he lowered his head in silent prayer…
‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who was responsible, sir,’ Mannon observed quietly as Hamilton clipped the lower hatch and came down the final rungs of the ladder into the bright sanity of the control room.
‘I don’t suppose we will,’ Rapier’s commander agreed grimly. ‘But I’m quite certain about one thing◦– only the Japs would have done something like that. And from now on any enemy ship we meet up with will be sunk without warning. Furthermore, no prisoners will be taken.’
Mannon made no reply. The skipper had been through a bad experience and the black mood would soon pass. Most of the Rapier’s crew had heard what had happened on board the junk and Chai Chen’s relationship with their captain was common knowledge. His reaction was understandable in the circumstances.
‘Where to now, sir?’ Mannon asked in an attempt to change the subject and to direct Hamilton’s mind towards other matters. Brooding would only make things worse. ‘O’Brien says we’ve less than half capacity in the bunkers. If we can’t get hold of some more fuel our maximum surface range will be down to two thousand miles at the most.’
Hamilton nodded. Although his expression had lost none of its grimness he seemed to be thinking rationally again.
‘We’ll make for Charlotte Island to begin with, Number One. The TGM reports only four torpedoes left so we’ll have to go to the island to load up the spares. And at the same time, we can top up our water and stores. After that we go hunting for a tanker.’
‘But supposing the Japs have already found the island, sir?’
‘I doubt that they have, Number One. Only Rapier’s officers know about it…’ He paused for a moment as he remembered. ‘And of course, my Portuguese friends.’
‘They might have forced the girl to tell them,’ Mannon suggested.
Hamilton’s face blazed in anger. He swung round as Mannon put the question and, for a brief moment, the submarine’s executive officer thought that the captain was going to strike him. Hamilton controlled his fury with superhuman effort.
‘If they had forced her to talk she would have told them about the rendezvous and we would have walked straight into an ambush. The fact that the Japs merely threw the oil overboard and then left the area shows she kept her mouth shut.’ Hamilton shivered as he recalled what Chai Chen had suffered to protect Rapier and her crew. His shoulders bowed suddenly and, without another word, he turned on his heel and made his way to the privacy of the wardroom to be alone with his thoughts….
TEN
‘Charlotte Island dead ahead, sir!’
Hamilton made his way forward to take over the periscope for the final approach and he carefully focused the low wedge of land in the center of the upper lens. The island resembled a saddle placed astride the blue rim of the horizon. The hummocked hill at the western end formed the pommel, while the gradual upwards slope to the east, ending with abrupt suddenness in the cliffs at Mi Lim Point, completed the illusion. To the south, and nearest to the submarine, the encircling arm of the palm-studded sandspit elbowed the sea aside to enclose a fine natural harbor within its protective grasp.
‘Stand by Diving Stations. Slow ahead both motors.’ He checked the bearing of the hill against the gyro repeater. ‘One point to starboard.’
It was a familiar routine. At least once a week for the last two months Rapier had nosed her way past Taichee Rock into the secluded bay and then slid under the camouflage nets covering the tiny inlet on the west side of the lagoon, to begin unloading the torpedoes and stores which Hamilton had carefully spirited out of Hong Kong in readiness for a situation such as this.
A line of red painted floats marking the fishing net suspended beneath, was clearly visible as Rapier edged within three miles of the island◦– innocent enough at first sight but, in fact, deliberately laid by the submarine’s crew during their first survey visit to mark an area of treacherous shoals to the southeast of the island.
Hamilton carried out a standard sky-search for hostile aircraft and then moved back from the ’scope. ‘Take over the watch, Sub,’ he told Villiers. ‘I want a few words with Roger in the wardroom. Give me a shout as soon as you see the starboard channel marker.’ He grinned. ‘You’ll find it on the north shore of the entrance◦– it looks like a pile of stones with an empty barrel on top.’
Despite the seemingly carefree way in which Hamilton had selected and prepared Rapier’s secret hiding place he had, in point of fact, tackled the scheme with considerable thought and a surprising attention to detail. Scott and his two assistants had used the submarine’s rubber dinghy to survey the anchorage on Rapier’s first inspection visit to the island and, on returning to the boat, the navigator had drawn up an accurate chart complete with cross bearings and depth soundings. Then, in consultation with Hamilton, an approach course was plotted and where the natural features were non-existent, artificial navigation marks had been put down◦– an untidily piled heap of stones on the beach or perhaps a section of bark carved from an old palm tree lying in a prominent position close to the shoreline.