Hewell wasn't in a word-wasting mood. He pulled out his gun, gestured to Hang to leave the hut, looked us over without expression and said the single word: "Out".
We went out. Apart from a sprinkling of palms down by the water's edge there weren't any more trees or vegetation on this side of the island than there had been on the other. The central mountain was much steeper on this side, and the great gash that bisected its southward side was well in sight, with one of the spurs running down from the north-east obscuring our view to the west and north.
Hewell didn't give us any time to admire the view. He formed us into a rough column of two, ordered us to clasp our hands above our heads-I paid no attention, I doubt whether I could have done it anyway and he didn't press the matter-and marched us off to the north-west, over the low spur of rock.
Three hundred yards on, just over the first spur-another still lay ahead of us-I noticed about fifty yards away on my right a pile of broken rock, of very recent origin. From my lower elevation I couldn't see what was behind that pile but I didn't have to see to know: it was the exit of the tunnel where Witherspoon and Hewell had broken through in the early hours of the morning. I looked carefully all around me, plotting and remembering its position against every topographical feature I could see until I felt fairly certain that I could find it without trouble even on the darkest night. I marvelled at my incurable penchant for assimilating and storing away information of the most useless character.
Five minutes later we were over the low crest of the second spur and could see the whole of the plain on the west side of the island stretched out in front of us. It was still in the shadow of the mountain, but it was full daylight now and easy to make out every feature.
The plain was bigger than the one to the east, but not much, maybe a mile long from north to south and four hundred yards wide between the sea and the first slopes of the mountain. There wasn't a single tree to be seen. In the south-west corner of the plain a long wide pier stretched far out into the glittering lagoon: at our distance of four or five hundred yards this jetty seemed to be made of concrete but was more likely of coral blocks. At the far end of the pier, mounted on rails, with its supporting legs set very far apart, was a heavy crane of the type I'd seen in graving yards for ship repair work: the entire super-structure and jib-there was no counter-balance-were mounted on a ring of live rollers. This was the crane the phosphate company would have used to load its ships-and it was also the crane that must have formed one of the deciding factors in the Navy's decision to set up its rocket installation on the island. It wasn't often, I thought, that you would find ready-made unloading facilities with a pier and crane that looked as if it might be good for thirty tons in a deserted island in the South Pacific.
Two other much narrower sets of rails ran up the pier. A few years ago, I supposed; one of those would have brought loaded phosphate wagons down to the pierhead while the other took the empty ones away. Today, one could still see one of the original sets of lines as it left the pier curving away to the south, rusted and overgrown, towards the phosphate mine: but the other set had been removed and replaced by new lengths of fresh shining rail that led straight inland for a distance of perhaps two hundred yards. Halfway along its length it passed over a curious circular pad of concrete about twenty-five yards in diameter, and finally ended in front of a hangar-shaped building, about thirty feet high, forty wide and a hundred in length. From where we stood almost directly behind the hangar it was impossible to see either its doors or where the rails ended, but it was a safe guess that the latter went all the way inside. The hangar itself was dazzling, it appeared to have been painted m pure white: but it was covered not in paint but in a painted white canvas, a measure, I supposed, designed to reflect the sun's rays and make work possible inside a building made of corrugated iron.
Some little distance north of this stood what were clearly the living-quarters, a group of haphazardly placed buildings, squat, ugly and obviously prefabricated. Further to the north again, at a distance of almost three-quarters of a mile from the hangar, was what seemed to be a solid square of concrete set into the ground. At that distance it was hard to tell, but it didn't look to be any more than two or three feet high. At least half a dozen tall steel poles rose from this concrete, each pole topped with a meshed scanner or radio antenna, all different in design.
Hang led us straight to the nearest and largest of the prefabricated huts. There were two men outside, Chinese, both with automatic carbines. One of them nodded, and Hang stood aside to let us pass through the open door.
The room beyond was obviously the rating's mess. Fifteen feet wide by forty long, it had three-tiered bunks arranged the full length of both walls, with walls and bunks liberally decorated with pin-ups in every shape and form. Between each pair of vertical trios of bunks was a three part locker. More art. Four mess tables, joined end to end to make one table and scrubbed as snowy white as the floor they stood on, ran the full length of the room. Set in the far wall of the room was a door. The sign above it read: 'P. O's Mess'.
On the benches round the two most distant tables sat about twenty men, petty officers and ratings. Some were fully dressed, others hardly dressed at all. One was slumped across the table, like a man asleep, his head pillowed on his bare forearms, and his forearms and the table below covered with clotted blood. None of the men looked shocked or scared or worried, they just sat there with tight and angry faces. They didn't look the type to scare easily, there were no kids among them, the Navy would have picked its best, its most experienced men for this operation, which probably explained why Hewell and his men, even with the elements of surprise and ambush on their side, had run into trouble.
Four men sat side by side on a bench by the top table. Like the men at the lower tables they had their hands clasped in front of them, resting on the wood. Each man had his epaulettes of rank on his shoulders. The big grey-haired man on the left with the puffed and bleeding mouth, the grey watchful eyes and the four gold bars would be Captain Griffiths. Beside him a thin balding hook-nosed man with three bars spaced by purple, an engineer commander. Next to him a blond young man with red between his two gold bars, that would be Surgeon-Lieutenant Brookman: and finally another lieutenant, a red-haired youngster with bitter eyes and a white compressed line where his mouth should have been.
Five Chinese guards were spaced round the walls of the room. Each carried an automatic carbine. By the head of the first table, smoking a cheroot, with a malacca cane-no gun-in his hand and looking more benign and scholastic than ever, was the man I had known as Professor Wither-spoon. Or so I thought until he turned and looked directly at me and then I saw, even although there was no particular expression on his face, that I could be wrong about the benign part of it. For the first time ever I saw him without the tinted glasses, and I didn't like what I saw: eyes with the lightest pupils I had ever seen, but misted, eyes with the flat dull look of inferior coloured marbles. They were almost the eyes you sometimes see on men who are completely blind.