But the decision to cover the entrance by radar looked as if he’d now decided to wait for the Jap to come out before attempting an attack. Hamilton hoped that Barratt would now decide to break wireless silence and put Kilindini in the picture. That Restless had found the submarine would repair some of the damage done in ignoring Captain (D)’s signals, something for which there was no longer any excuse.
Sandy Hamilton finished his cup of tea, munched the last of the shortbread, and made for the bridge.
It was the heaviest rainstorm he’d experienced for a long time and when it had passed, going almost as suddenly as it had come and taking with it the hail and the wind, Petty Officer Hosokawa emerged from the bushes under which he’d been sheltering, shook himself like a dog and studied the sky. ‘Come on, boys, the storm is over,’ he called over his shoulder.
Two soaked, bedraggled, young men with rifles and bandoliers came from the bushes. Shaking the rain from their bodies, brushing it from their faces with their hands, they laughed at each other’s discomfort.
‘You’re as wet as fishes,’ said the Petty Officer.
‘It was fine,’ said one of the seamen. ‘Makes the body cool.’
Hosokawa adjusted the webbing which held his revolver, and looked at his watch. ‘Past five o’clock,’ he said. ‘Time to patrol. Lieutenant Toshida will be coming to check soon. Let’s get on with it, boys.’
They followed the Petty Officer down to where the catamaran was drawn up on a sand strip, its stern under overhanging trees, the bow end afloat. They manhandled it into the water, lay their rifles fore-and-aft, and climbed in. The patched brown sail was unfurled to flap idly in the breeze while the Petty Officer pulled the starting lanyard. After several abortive attempts the two-stroke spluttered uncertainly before screaming into life. Hosokawa took the tiller, opened the throttle, and the catamaran gathered way. Once clear of the inlet he headed for the mouth of the creek.
For Hosokawa these creek patrols were the highlights of the day. Always he steered to the eastern side, towards the headland that jutted furthest to seaward. On reaching it he would turn the catamaran and make for the headland on the western side. The journey across the mouth of the creek completed, he would head down the narrows to pass in front of the huts. Then he’d turn and make for the bluff. The patrol ended, the catamaran would return to the inlet where it would once again be drawn up on the sand.
The sentries had been placed at the mouth of the creek to stop Maji fishermen putting to sea, and to give warning of vessels approaching. Apart from the fisherman killed on the first morning, nothing untoward had happened and the sentries had found their duties uneventful. But the execution of Able Seaman Awa and the regular inspections carried out by Lieutenant Toshida — plus Lieutenant Kagumi’s surprise checks — ensured that there was no slackness. Nor, in fact, was there any lack of volunteers for a duty which provided escape from the confined and fetid atmosphere of the submarine, and the hard work of cutting, carrying and laying camouflage.
As always, Hosokawa turned the catamaran short of the mangroves at the foot of the eastern headland and set course for the western headland. The breeze, now from the northwest, had freshened and the petty officer, a sailorman to his fingertips, switched off the engines and trimmed the sail to the wind. The clouds had moved away, the sun was low in the western sky, and in the aftermath of the storm the worst heat of the day had gone. The catamaran’s gentle motion, the cry of seabirds, and the quiet swish of water against the hull induced in Hosokawa a pleasant feeling of well being.
The end of a strange interlude was in sight; the repairs to I-357 were almost completed, the tests would take place late the next day, and the submarine would leave the creek soon afterwards, for Mombasa and Penang. He was thinking of Penang and the pleasantries of life there when he heard the faint thrum of aircraft engines. Instinctively he reached for the starting lanyard, heaved at it several times before the outboard came to life. Opening the throttle, he steered for the inlet while a seaman got busy furling the sail. He was doing this when he shouted, ‘A ship.’ Pointing to the west, he added, ‘The plane is circling round a ship.’
Hosokawa looked, saw the sunlight reflected on the distant aircraft as it banked in a tight turn. Beneath it he saw the ship silhouetted against the western sky. Soon afterwards the headland had shut out the view as the catamaran bustled down the creek towards the inlet.
But the brief glance had been enough. The dark shape on the skyline was a destroyer, the circling aircraft a Catalina. He turned the catamaran sharply to port, opened the throttle wide and headed for the bluff. Within a few minutes he had rounded it, boarded I-357, and hurried down below to knock on the door of Commander Yashimoto’s cabin.
Soon after the rainstorm had passed in a last flurry of hail, Restless turned on to the new patrol line.
Barratt was about to go down to his cabin to get on with the briefing notes when a call on the radar voice-pipe sounded. Dodds answered, repeated the operator’s report: ‘Radar echo, red zero-nine-five, seven thousand yards, opening, classified small surface object.’
Barratt hurried to the port side of the bridge, trained his binoculars on to the bearing. Their powerful magnification brought closer the dark bulk of the far headland, short of it the stick of mast with its furled sail, beneath it the hull and outrigger of a catamaran, a tell-tale fluff of white at its stern.
‘Must have an engine, sir,’ Dodds called from the compass platform. He, too, was using binoculars.
‘An outboard,’ said the Captain. ‘Made in Tokyo, no doubt.’
‘You think they’re Japs, sir?’ The question was almost a yelp of surprise.
‘Yes.’
‘D’you think they can see us?’
‘Unlikely from sea level at seven thousand yards, but possible. We hadn’t seen the catamaran until radar picked it up.’
Barratt felt a strange exultation, a desire to make known his emotions, to shout, ‘Thank God’. Instead he offered a silent prayer of thanks. He had been haunted by the thought of an anti-climax — the possibility that the submarine might have left during the rainstorm while Restless was shifting station to the west of the headland. That would have made a nonsense of the long search of the last few days and the final triumph of the find. It was the sort of uneven-handed trick that Fate might have played.
But that hadn’t happened, the Japanese submarine was still there and he was convinced that the catamaran crew, their eyes at sea level, had not sighted Restless against the cloudy, rain-streaked sky of late afternoon. Had they done so they wouldn’t have continued their journey across the mouth of the creek to the further headland.
So what was he going to do? Wait, maybe for days, for the submarine to come out; break W/T silence, inform Kilindini, request orders? Or press on during the coming night with what he had in mind?
Torn between these options he went to the PPI, watched the sweeping scanner trace its picture in phosphorescent light, saw the moving green speck turning short of the distant headland, imagined Japanese faces, sinister and evil. He gripped the bridge coaming more tightly.
The faint sound of an aircraft’s engines broke into his thoughts. It was followed immediately by reports from the bridge lookouts, from the officer-of-the-watch, and from the radar office. ‘Aircraft, green three-three-zero, six thousand yards, closing fast, flying low.’