We then began to focus our attention on the huge propeller: phosphor bronze, worth a fortune, nearly as valuable as gold! The nosecones represented loose change compared to this! We first tried to slice off one of the leaves of the propeller, but abandoned the idea when we had difficulty with the cutting tool. Further exploration revealed a spare leaf, bolted to the side of the cargo hold. Perfect! We quickly unbolted it from its housing and laid it on the ocean floor. We then went back to shore, assembled two dozen Burma Oil drums and freighted them out over the wreck, towing them behind our three Geminis. We lashed the Burmoils together, filled them with water and sank them over the wreck. Having attached the propeller leaf to the Burmoils, we used our airlines to blow water out of the drums, and slowly they began to rise to the surface. In no time at all there were twenty-four Burmoils bobbing on the surface with the huge one-and-a-half ton propeller leaf suspended on ropes underneath.
The flotilla headed back for shore. As the Geminis chugged along, the Burmoils unfortunately began to fill with water and started to pop under the surface one after the other. We were quickly down to two or three Burmoils. The sheer weight of the propeller began to pull down on the rear of the Geminis and lift the bows up into the air, threatening to tip them over at any moment. The shout went up: ‘Cut the ropes!’
Ginge, who was steering my boat, cut what he thought was the main rope. Unfortunately, he had not noticed that there was another rope attached to the propeller leaf whose other end was coiled loosely in the bottom of the boat. The heavy hemp rope snaked out and snapped tight around my upper leg.
As I struggled against the muscle-tearing pull of the rope, a mental picture of Geordie, the jungle survival expert, flashed into my mind. ‘You are only as sharp as your knife,’ he used to say in his heavy Newcastle accent. I reached for my diver’s knife, fitted to my leg. The blade glittered in the sun as I hacked away at the hemp. The pain in my thigh was becoming unbearable. I could just feel my hip-joint beginning to dislocate as I cut through the final strands. The relief was immediate. The propeller leaf plummeted to the depths of the ocean. As it disappeared, I don’t know which was more painfuclass="underline" my thigh or the thought of the thousands of pounds sterling lying on the ocean floor!
The OC turned a blind eye to the escapade. He knew it was going on, but after all, it was good training – something for us to focus our minds on, instead of aimlessly paddling around looking for fish. However, there was no way he could ignore what was about to happen in Hong Kong.
‘Let’s go for a boogie at BMH and work up a thirst,’ said Clint as he stuffed his rugby kit into a battered holdall.
‘Work up a thirst! I must have lost a gallon of sweat this afternoon. I need an ale transfusion quick. I’ll be fainting from dehydration.’
‘You can get a drink at the disco.’
‘I’m not into discos. I’ve got some serious drinking to do.’
‘Me too. But we can go down town later. Think of all those gorgeous nurses, those black-stocking beauties just waiting for us. Right little ravers, no inhibitions. They’re seeing naked bodies all day long. It builds up the passion, especially in this heat. Can’t you just feel those wellpractised hands getting to grips with you already? They can give me a bed-bath any time they want.’
‘Hey, Clint, remember I’m a married man!’
We were in the changing rooms, Buffalo, Clint and I, discussing the evening’s entertainment. Buffalo and Clint were inspectors in the Hong Kong police. They’d co-opted me into their local league rugby team. That afternoon’s match had been particularly hard, but we’d just scraped a win. I was feeling the effects of the humidity; having been in Hong Kong only three weeks, I was still not fully acclimatized. The thought of several hours’ dancing did not exactly fill me with excitement. However, as I did up my last shirt button, I resigned myself to the BMH detour.
We finally left BMH around midnight and to my relief headed for Tsim-Sha-Tsui, a bustling shopping, bar and restaurant district situated in the shadow of the mountain known as the Peak, which towers like a high-swell wave crest over the trough of Hong Kong city. We were aiming for the renowned Bottoms Up bar to get on with the real business of the night: beer and men’s talk.
As we turned into Hankow Road, I looked up eagerly to see if I could spot the entrance to the bar I’d heard so much about. A flashing neon ticker tape of matchstick Chinese script showered right down to street level. The occasional English sign emphasized the cosmopolitan nature of the city: ‘Golden Dragon Company – Wholesale and Retail’, ‘Jimmy Sung – Tailor’, ‘Golden Fountain Restaurant’. The road itself was lined with high-class boutiques, their window displays expensively draped and spotlit to attract passers-by, who even at this hour were thronging the pavements. The trademarks of Sony, Omega and Nikon assailed window-browsers from all sides.
In spite of the neon snowstorm, the sign for the Bottoms Up bar stood out a fair distance down on the right-hand side of the road. Boxshaped, the sign had a thick black border engraved with white Chinese writing. The centre was a rich purple colour. It featured a prominent white bottom cleverly designed to resemble a heart.
It was 2.00am by the time I finally made it out of there and through the door of the Red Mill Inn. This was a conventional late-night drinking den. It was the early hours of the morning and as the conversation wore on and the sporting exploits grew in stature with each alcohol-infused repetition, my concentration began to wander. I gazed around the bar, then momentarily tensed, consciously halting the drift of my mind towards weariness-induced torpor. Something wasn’t quite right. I didn’t feel comfortable. There was something in the atmosphere of the bar that seemed to convey a vague sense of danger, some unstated aura of threat – not especially aimed at me or Clint or Buffalo, just generalized, floating around the room, seeping through the air like a gas escape. It was as if all it would take was a misinterpreted gesture, an ill-timed comment or a glance in the wrong direction, and the casual strike of a match would trigger the explosion. I was sure the feeling had not been there before we came in. Something or someone had precipitated it since we’d arrived.
More alert, I scanned the room seeking clues. Everything seemed normal – normal that is, for a late-night bar in the early hours of the morning in downtown Hong Kong, a bar peopled by a potent racial mix drawn from the Portuguese, Chinese, British and Filipino subcultures. The general bar area seemed quiet enough; just two neatlooking Chinese men sitting by the door talking softly and a sprinkling of other nondescript faces scattered around in ones and twos.
After a while the general calmness began to allay my fears. It must be my hyperactive imagination, I thought as I did a mental search-anddestroy mission inside my body to locate and unwind the tension-cramped muscles. By the time Susi Soriano appeared and I had recognized her as a nightclub hostess and singer from the Speakeasy Club, a seedy downtown drinking den that Clint, Buffalo and I had recently started to frequent, all notions of latent hostility had completely evaporated. I felt I needed some female conversation. Nothing more, just friendly conversation. It gets lonely when you are separated from the wife.