A jungle warfare specialist named Sergeant Pat Bantry, a hulking New South Wales farmer, was also brought on board and would be favoured, despite his bulk, by becoming Doucette’s forward hand for his folboat.
Pengulling cast off. Everything went cheerfully as it easily penetrated the dangerous coral reefs of the Torres Straits, and reached westwards through the Arafura and the Timor Seas, sighting peaceful Melville Island north of Darwin. Down the shoal coast of Western Australia they came to the American base at Exmouth Gulf, Potshot. All the way they practised on their silenced weaponry and by day kept their large Caucasian jaws and shoulders and hands under the awning. As for the routine, some men could sleep on the deck, unless there was bad weather and they could then sleep in the wheelhouse. The hold contained three officers’ bunks and a sophisticated radio run by batteries. The head, used by all ranks without distinction, was on deck in the stern. The galley and various cupboards were also there, and there were water tanks and a gravity tank to the engine which was used as a mess table. A tarpaulin covered much of the deck, and I know it was decided that only those who could pass as Asians would be in the open – Doucette, the boy terrier of an Irishman; Rubinsky, the olive-skinned Jewish rating from the Australian navy, and Nav himself.
At sea by night they had taken off and dumped some of the Pengulling’s bullet-resistant cladding, and were thankful for the good weather to that point, for they saw that the armour’s two tons had reduced the freeboard to a mere ten inches, and that would not be enough in stormy sea. Now they rode higher but would splinter to matchwood under any attack.
The American rear-admiral at Potshot was very kind to them and, convinced that their destination was the Japanese naval base at Surabaya in Java, he told Doucette solemnly that everyone believed the hopeless little vessel was bound for Fremantle. In any case, Pengulling was repainted here with camouflage grey.
There was a load of gear awaiting them, flown from Melbourne by IRD. New British-built folboats, spare parts for the engine, anti-glare glasses, binoculars, etc. Leo would later tell me that he was a bit amazed when Doucette declared he was going to drop inland a little way and see some of his relatives who had a cattle station east of Exmouth, and a transport plane flying to Perth agreed to drop him there. Some first cousin of his from Ireland had settled there.
Mortmain looked over the new British folboats with Leo and said that the stitching of the canvas was appalling, a real wartime economy job. We used to laugh at Japanese manufacture, Mortmain told Leo. But he and Leo and their partners went for a warm-up paddle of twenty miles or so, and suddenly the stitching meant nothing. For Leo, excitement and daring would prevail over any deficiencies of thread.
How often did these men mention their women, I wonder. Mortmain his – as I would discover – wily, angular wife, or Leo his fiancée? I never thought about it at the time, I presumed we were talked about, boasted of, envisaged constantly. The older I get the more I doubt it. It was simply that they were engaged in an all-absorbing task.
Doucette returned from his cousin’s cattle station, and he and his men took to their little fishing boat again and sailed north out of Exmouth Gulf. The forward hold was full of armaments and other gear, and there were flaps in the superstructure to enable men to take up battle stations in an emergency. The horns of a submarine supply and maintenance ship USS Wagram sent this little grey sliver of a vessel on its way. It made half a mile before the engine instantly overheated and choked. Some mysterious components named the centrifugal pump and the coupling key of the intermediate propeller shaft had broken. The Americans had Pengulling towed to Wagram’s side, and the engine and most of the drive shaft were hauled aboard and worked on. The Americans replaced the centrifugal pump.
When they left Potshot, thinking that they were going to Fremantle, the American mechanics earnestly told Doucette to nurse the engine along.
And now our voyagers were away on an afternoon tide again, the opinion being that the new pump would last them a long time. Interestingly, as they headed north-east along the desert coast, once the course and rudder were set, Doucette read a little brown book, Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Chapman. The kid leather cover was a scuffed brown, and he had won it as a prize at Eton. Tea and beer had both been spilt on it. The men watched him as if he were trolling for some code to their present situation.
Certainly, a great storm worthy of The Odyssey hit them that September night. The decks were awash with fluorescent foam, and the Pengulling was a mere tub before waves which Leo said were big as blocks of flats, and came up behind, and lifted the little boat high above a nauseating trench of water, dropped it in, awaited its emergence, and began the process again. All night, the water across the deck was waist-deep. Mortmain chopped a hole in the hull to allow the volume of deck water to escape. Above or below, sleep was not possible. Most of the muscular ratings and soldiers were sick, and lay on their sides helpless, humiliated so soon. Leo too was sick, but in a practical way, stepping outside the wheelhouse, retching, coming in again with a clear mind for the next little while.
It was when the storm abated and the sky grew brilliant again the next afternoon, and the men returned to being hungry, that Doucette told them what he and Leo and Rufus and a few others already knew: where they were going. Leo’s partner Rubinsky, for example, had not known until then. He and the others were astonished and enlarged by the news.
Singapore. Three boat crews and one in reserve. Nine limpets per folboat, as at Townsville, but live ones now. After the exhilaration, for the meat of the long journey, there were only three books on board – the novel The Sheik, an erotic story tame by the standards of today, that little leather copy of the Chapman edition of Ulysses, and a black-covered devotional book, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, which belonged to Sergeant Pat Bantry, and which only Bantry had any interest in. Most social life took place on the after-deck behind the wheelhouse, which was adequately covered by the tarpaulin to enable gatherings including those men whose big hands and feet and large features deprived them of any chance of resembling an Indonesian or a Malay. Mortmain told stories of life on teak plantations in Burma and Malaya. The malice and whimsy of elephants figured a lot in them. Able Seaman Jockey Rubinsky told stories about his Russian father and uncles in Bondi Junction, a location where Hitler was unlikely to disrupt their energies. Meanwhile, the man keeping watch stood on the gravity tank within the canopied area and stuck his head through a hole in the awning roof.