‘Aye. I dare say.’ McLean was cautious. ‘For preventing men from the village going out to fish, you mean?’
‘Yes. Just that.’ Barratt looked at his watch. ‘We’ve an hour left. I suggest we stay here until it’s time to get back to the casuarinas. Maybe we’ll see something else going on in the creek.’
‘Aye, and that’s a good idea, sir. We’ll nae be finding a better place for watching.’
They were silent for some time, each busy with his own thoughts until Barratt said, ‘I hope to God that Morrow and Katu haven’t run into those sentries.’
‘Katu will be going in alone will he not? From the direction of the spring. That’s at the back. At the foot of the ravine. The sentries seem to be stationed on the beach side of the huts. He should be okay. A black man and all. Just one of the African fishermen.’
‘Fair enough for Katu, but Morrow is white. He can’t pass himself off as one of them.’
‘He’ll be fine, sir. He’s looking black enough and he speaks the lingo.’
McLean’s confidence was infectious. Barratt changed the subject. ‘Those catamarans on the west bank — apart from the one we saw moving around — I suppose they’re for the use of the outfit in the woods, whoever they are?’
‘Aye. That could be it,’ agreed McLean.
Making themselves as comfortable as they could on their rocky perch, they settled down to watch. But the night had other plans; clouds crept up on the moon and the watchers were once more in total darkness.
They’d gone someway down the ravine when Katu stopped, grabbed Morrow by the arm. ‘Listen,’ he said urgently. Morrow heard the sound of the two-stroke engine, a distant high-pitched snarl. It came from the general direction of the creek, grew slowly louder, then stopped.
‘That’s an outboard engine,’ he said. He was explaining what that was when Katu interrupted. ‘I know, Bwana. I have already seen such things in Mocimboa da Praia.’ Katu’s tone implied concern that he should be thought so ignorant. ‘They push a boat through the water,’ he added by way of putting the matter beyond doubt.
From where they were in the wooden ravine it was not possible to see into the creek, so they continued their slow but silent descent towards the spring. Katu stopped at frequent intervals to listen. By the time they reached the foot of the ravine the sound of the outboard had started and stopped several times; on each occasion it appeared to be increasing in volume.
While still in the trees which bordered a small clearing Katu stopped suddenly and pointed ahead. The spring,’ he whispered. In the moonlight Morrow saw a rough stone canopy in the centre of the clearing. Listening intently, he could hear the murmuring bubble of the spring which the canopy shielded from the sun. Katu came close, spoke into the Sub-Lieutenant’s ear. ‘Not far now, Bwana.’
Keeping to the trees, they moved round the clearing with Katu still in the lead. They had not gone far when he stopped, held a finger to his mouth, moved behind the trunk of a tree and gestured to Morrow to do the same. They had almost reached the edge of a big clearing in which could be seen the tall trunks and bunched heads of coconut palms. Beyond them a semi-circle of huts stood above a white stretch of beach which reached down to the edge of the creek, its water margin silvered by moonlight. For Morrow an otherwise captivating scene was jarred suddenly by the distant silhouette of two men walking towards each other from opposite sides of the beach. It was not possible to catch anything more than glimpses of them through the gaps between the huts and the palm trees, but those glimpses were enough to imprint on his mind an indelible image: the men carried rifles over their shoulders. When they met they conferred briefly before turning to march back in the directions whence they had come. Who they were he had no idea. What they were was pretty obvious.
Twenty-one
When the sentries were out of sight Katu left Morrow with a final, ‘You wait here, Bwana. I come back soon.’
The African was moving stealthily forward when the clouds closed over the moon and its pale light went as if at the touch of some heavenly switch.
Thank the Lord for that, breathed Morrow, peering into the black wall of night and seeing nothing. The sentries had been walking close to the water’s edge, about fifty yards in front of the huts, the entrances to which must have been on the beach side for nothing but blank walls had faced him before the moon went.
Katu would be all right, he decided. Even if the moon came again and he was seen, it would not matter. It was normal practice for Africans to leave their huts during the night to relieve themselves; tribal culture did not embrace modern conveniences.
The Sub-Lieutenant leant against the tree trunk, alert, watching the darkness, his senses finely tuned. Before he’d seen the armed men on the beach he’d regarded Operation Maji as an exciting adventure. The sort of thing he’d read about as a boy. But it was more than that now, more complex, more worrying. He was, though he would not have admitted it, fearful of what might happen: that he might be the target for those rifles? Bizarre pictures of the shattered corpses of the Fort Nebraska survivors passed through his mind, and he recalled Brad Corrigan’s description of the horrors of that night. From where he stood all that could be heard was the water lapping the beach. Was the Japanese submarine somewhere in the creek? The men with the rifles made sense if it was. They’d be Jap sentries. Some of the men who’d massacred the survivors. No mercy could be expected from such people. Waiting behind the trunk of the palm tree he worried increasingly about what might happen, about things that could go wrong. In spite of the hot night he shivered, felt for the revolver at his hip. Its touch was only partly reassuring.
Was this Japanese submarine they were hunting the one which had attacked the southbound convoy? The one Restless had attacked, thought then to be a German U-boat? He recalled the excitement of the occasion, his first real taste of action. Difficult to believe that it had happened less than a week ago.
There hadn’t been much to see. Too dark for that. But a merchant ship near them had been torpedoed, they’d heard the explosion, and Restless had made an asdic contact soon afterwards. Sean O’Brien, the ASCO, had classified it as submarine, and Barratt, deciding on a counter-attack, had taken Restless in at high speed, dropping a pattern of depth-charges set shallow. The usual but always spectacular fountains of foaming water had leapt high in the air as explosion after explosion rumbled and thudded, the surface of the sea trembling, convulsed by the forces beneath it, the destroyer shaking to the pounding of her own charges. What followed had been unusual and immensely satisfying. The bows and then the top of the conning-tower of a submarine had shown briefly in the long white beam of Restless's searchlight. Morrow had been on the bridge, seen it happen, heard Barratt’s shouted, Tort twenty,’ the destroyer heeling over, swinging hard to starboard, and the First Lieutenant’s urgent phone warning to Geoffrey Lawson in the gunnery control-tower, Tort quarter — two hundred yards — submarine surfacing.’
But all signs of the submarine had gone within seconds of its breaking surface. The convoy had gone on, leaving Restless to try to regain asdic contact. Whether the submarine had broken surface because of a loss of trim, or whether the depth-charges had sunk it, they were never to know. All attempts to regain contact in waters of great depth failed. An hour later they’d abandoned the search.