Chapter 14

Rescue

 

  “I can't leave him, but you must get away.”

  Jillian looked up at Harris.  The grizzled Yorkshireman gazed down at her crouching under the lean-to by the side of the injured man on the stretcher.  She swabbed Peterkin's brow and frowned at the bandage enclosing the rigger's slashed thigh.  Infection had set in quickly in the tropical heat, and the limb had swelled during the night.  By morning a fever had attacked with razors of delirium which had him thrashing in agony.  All she could do was fight the deadly temperature with wet swabs.  At least there was plenty of cloth and water.

  “Take the men and get into the bush.  You might be able to get over the strait to Surabaja.”

  Harris looked across the shallows to where a desultory surf broke on the reef, to where imprisonment and unknown terrors lay.

  “I'll not leave you, young Jill. Ted! Ted!” he raised his voice. Bickers ducked under the stiff canvas with his face ashen.  His white coveralls had been modified with the sleeves cut short and the garment was open to the waist.  The changes made little difference.... he was soaked with sweat like the rest of them.

  “Ted, get the boys together, grab what you can and bolt for the hills, man.”

  “There's a boat coming in, Sky, full 'o Japs.  I reckon we've 'ad it.”

 Harris led the way out, Bickers behind, and Jill followed, leaving her patient for just one moment.  As the rigger had said, a motorboat had left the warship and was heading for the beach.  Its shallow draft took it across the edge of the reef but it slowed as it picked its way toward the shore, a white-uniformed sailor standing up in the bows giving directions through the coral.

  “You should go....”

  Whatever else she might have said was checked in her throat by an involuntary gasp.  The sailor standing in the eyes of the motorboat was thrown overboard into the sea.  A row of white spears suddenly stood up from the water accompanied by a timpani of ear-splitting cracks. The waterspouts marched across the boat in a second, and the small vessel disintegrated into a shower of debris, bodies and burning chunks, which settled on to the water. In the next second, the seaplane circling above it was transformed into a streamer of fire laced with streaks of black oily smoke.  Its wings separated from the fuselage, and the pieces plunged down to raise a gravestone of foam as it hit the sea.  The warship anchored off the shore, previously so implacable, suddenly blazed with stabbing points of fire as its guns threw lines of tracer into the air, and the black blotches of anti-aircraft explosions smeared the morning sky over the reef. Most of the airshipmen dived for cover, and Harris pulled Jillian down behind a small grassy dune.

  With a snarl that raised the hair on the back of her neck, a tiny airplane sped across the edge of the reef.  Another flew higher, both of them travelling faster than she had ever seen an aircraft move before. They had attacked the Japanese!  The first, she realized had strafed the boat with deadly effect, the second had shot down the seaplane.  It was her second experience of aerial combat in twenty-four hours, and it became no less heart stopping with repetition.

  The two sleek aircraft turned like dervishes upon the anchored warship, attacking from two different directions, and the grey monster....it was only a small frigate, she would discover later....was deluged in waterspouts as the bullets struck the sea, then the ship was smothered in rippling flashes as the rounds hit.  With a final jet of tracer, which flailed across the sky, the frigate's defences were stilled. The fighters raced over it and whirled to make a second attack.  The ship spouted steam from its perforated boiler and smoke from a fire on its deck.  Jill missed the drone of the new engine for a moment, but then the rising whine in the sky above caught her attention.

“Look there!” Ted Bickers shouted.  A dozen others among the survivors imitated his pointing finger.  Another airplane was high overhead, its nose pointing straight down as though the machine intended to commit spectacular suicide as it plunged into the sea.  No....into the frigate!  Then a black blob separated from its underside and fell independently.  The aircraft swung upward. But the bomb continued down, becoming a blur, which merged with the Japanese ship.  The explosion was like a sunburst which threw flaming meteors that hissed into the water.  In a moment all that was left of the ship was a scab of oil on the sea, and a coil of smoke which blew away on the gathering monsoon breeze.  Somebody said something brief, rude and heart-felt.

  Like a pair of mastiffs on the hunt the two small grey airplanes circled nervously above the swamps and treetops as they searched for further dangers.  But the beach was quiet except for the distinctive growl of their engines.  One of the planes leveled above the palm forest and flew across the clearing.  The people on the beach jumped and waved. 

  “God, look at that!” Harris cried.  To impress the stolid Cox'n required more than the ordinary, and Jillian shared his amazement.

  The little aircraft's most distinctive feature was a mantis-like claw which stuck up over its sleek nose.  Red and blue markings plastered jauntily on its wings and tail gave it a devil-may-care aspect which was reflected in the pilot.  The man had pulled back his transparent canopy so that his cockpit was open.  As the airplane went by they could see his sunglasses and red scarf and a broad grin and a cheeky thumb jabbing at the air.

  “It's a Yank!”

  It was.  The pilot's face told the story as much as the star-and-circle markings.  Jillian gaped with the rest of them.  The roar of the engine and the purposeful look of the little machine suddenly triggered another memory.  Perhaps it was the red paint against the sky or the heroic image of the pilot.  But she remembered Tom Campbell-Black.  It had been the highlight of her young life, a special present before she set out for nursing school at the Brisbane General Hospital.  Her brothers had often been treated to the adventures to which boys were accustomed.  But after her eighteenth birthday, her father had created one just for her.  She never asked how much the fare in the Qantas airliner had cost, but it must have represented many months of saving.  It was history, he said, something which would never come again.  So he took her to Darwin....just the two of them....to see the planes in the Mac Robertson Air Race from England to Australia.  Dad had fallen asleep during the long wait, but she had not, and when the scarlet Comet Racer touched down, she had been one of the first across the airfield to see the pilots climb out after their epic journey.  Scott, with his flashy grin and articulate manner in front of the press she had not cared for much at all.  But the shy one, Campbell-Black, had made the adventure for her.  It was his eyes which caused her to stare with hero-worship.  They were soft brown eyes with steel behind them....like the eyes of the boy she was in love with, the boy who had broken her heart by going off to join the navy.  The tiny airplane reminded her of the Comet Racer, and she thought desperately of....

  The air was split again by the roar of an engine.  This was different, a businesslike rumble with a rattle behind it.  The dive-bomber swept over. It, too, was decorated with red and white stripes and proud stars as though it were afraid of nothing. A man waved energetically from the back of the glasshouse canopy.  She squinted into the morning sunlight, mistaking the echoes of her memory for the realities of the palm-lined shore marred by the stark skeleton of the airship.  But she looked again, given only seconds as the plane flew over.

  Waving, waving.

  Her long blond hair, loose and undisciplined once again, swirled about her face and she pushed it quickly away.

  It couldn't be.  It couldn't be.

  Then she was jumping and waving and shouting. Harris looked at her askance .

  “It's hiiiiiim!  It's hiiiiiim!”

  For several moments the aircraft circled and there was more waving.

  Harris' dour Yorkshire manner forbade him to ask directly, but Jillian detected his curiosity.

  “It's my husband, Allan, I'm sure of it.”

  “Useful fellow, your husband.”

  She laughed delightedly, still bouncing on her toes with excitement.  It was not at all like her to let herself go like this, but such a moment of magic might never happen again.  He had come for her.

  After she had settled down, she smiled at Harris.

  “His last letter was from America.”

  “He seems to have moved on since then.”

  She laughed again.

  “Well, he did say he was where they make the films....he's mad about the pictures....but I thought it was a disguised way of saying he was serving on convoy escort duty across the Atlantic to America.  They have to be careful what they write about their movements. Now here he is. Look, here he comes again!”

  The stubby grey bomber droned slowly past with its flaps hanging down and they were able to take a better look at it.

  “What's that thing they have sticking up in front?” she asked.

  “Damned if I know,” said Harris.  “And I wonder where they came from? I thought our air forces were long gone from this area.”

  Then a light began blinking from the rear cockpit. 

  Allan!

  “What's that?” She shaded her eyes against the glare.

  “Signal light, Jill.  Here, Ted, you know the code, don't you?”

  Ted Bickers was watching with the rest of them. 

  “Not as well as poor old Nobby.  Let's see....V....O....L....L....”  His reading of the light broke off into a mumble.  As the aircraft banked away over the trees he shook his head.

  “Ah, I didn't get it, Sky.  At least nothing that made sense.  It seemed to read 'VOLLXXIIINO6' or some such like that.”

  Jill clapped her hands and laughed.

  “It's him, all right!”  She was bouncing on her toes again.

  Harris smiled at the exuberance which had burst through the cool professionalism of the nurse, and the courage of the woman who had braved the fire and the mountain trying to rescue poor Saxby.

  “Well you'd better let on what it means, then, hadn't you.”

  She smiled at them.

  “It's a reference number for the 'National Geographic'.”

  “Oh, aye, anyone could tell that,” Harris smiled back.

  “It is,” she insisted.  “When Allan and I were going to school....well, you didn't admit to being sweet on somebody....but we were.  I first knew when he bought me a subscription to the magazine.  It was pretty unusual where we come from.  But Allan paid for the regular copies from his newspaper delivery job.  He said I was so ignorant about the world he couldn't stand it, and he had to do something to keep me from lowering the tone of the class. That's when I knew he was keen on me.”

  “And the numbers?” Harris prompted.

  “We used to sit on the foreshore and read them together when they arrived each month. He remembered everything....every title and topic. When he joined the navy he kept paying for my subscription.  I've got dozens of them stored at Dad's place. Every time Allan went anywhere with his ship, he'd let me know where he was by quoting the number of the volume and part which had an article about the place. It was just a joke at first but when the war started and security about where he went became important, he was always able to tell me where he was. I bet this one means 'Sumatra'.  I'll make a point of checking when we get home.”

  “You had the magazines to look into,” Harris said, intrigued, “but how did he know? Did he visit the public library or summat?”

  Jill smiled at him again. 

  “He has a photographic memory,” she replied. “It drives me mad.  I've had to swot away at the textbooks to get anywhere at all. He can just skim through the pages like he was having a quick browse.  What's more, he doesn't simply remember what was written, he understands it, too.  Makes me sick!”

  Harris smiled back.

  “I think it makes you proud.”

  Jillian took a deep breath.

  “Oh, yes,” she agreed with a sigh.

  The next message was a written one.  The airshipman who retrieved the leather satchel which dropped to the ground handed it to Harris, who passed it to Jill.  She fumbled with the catch and found the sheet of paper inside.

  “'Stay put',” she read.

  “That's all?” Harris asked.

  She blushed and folded the paper quickly.  “The rest is for me. And there's a first-aid kit.”

  The plane skimmed away and climbed over the sea.  The tiny fighters went with it and they disappeared toward the north-west, toward Singapore.  Jillian put her hands to her lips as though in prayer.  An icy hand gripped her heart.  He was flying toward the enemy, toward the war. To lose him now would bring the world to an end. The vacuum left behind when the sound of the planes had receded was filled only by the rustle of the palm tops and the flapping of the airship's ruined cover.

  In the hour that passed they prepared for a march overland should it become necessary, but the speculation among the men was over the meaning of the brief message. Jill busied herself looking after Peterkin.  The first-aid kit Allan had dropped must have been the one carried as the aircraft's standard equipment, for it was labeled with the stenciled designation, “U.S. Navy”.  It was basic but had what she needed.  The ampoule of morphine she regarded as treasure, and the sulfur powder would help stem the infection.  When she had time to take the mug of black tea which Harris handed her, the injured rigger was sleeping.

  “Not a minute too soon,” the Cox'n commented. 

  She nodded.  “He wouldn't have survived the morning without.”

  “Like I said, your husband's a useful chap to have around.”

  She smiled but could not hide the worry.

  Men had been watching the sky ever since the brief, violent battle between the strange airplanes and the Japanese ship.  Now once more there were shouts and pointing fingers.  Four of the tiny fighters sped overhead, quite high.  In the distance, out to sea, there were four more.

  “Where are they coming from?”  Harris wondered again.

  “Bejesus! There's a stoush goin' on, Sky!”

  It was so.  Far in the distance a formation of aircraft was approaching from the north-west.  They looked like the bombers which had cruised so relentlessly across the docks of Singapore the previous morning. 

  “We'd best dig in,” said Harris.  “They're going to give us a going over, I'd say.”

  But the fighters swarmed among the larger aircraft. From such a distance there was no detail, no rending of metal or gushing of fire. Yet the smoke trails which led down to the sea told of a pitched battle in the humid air above the green coast.  The phalanx of bombers broke up as the combat reached its climax.  One of the twin-engined attackers, with green topsides, a grey belly, and marked with the red circles, tried to reach its target, to obliterate what its compatriots had begun and the mountain had almost finished.  But a slim grey killer latched on to its tail, and it fell with a thunderous explosion into the coconut forest a mile away.  They caught a glimpse of the little fighter as it screamed past, and Jill thought she recognized the same pilot....the dark glasses and the red scarf.....now leaning forward tensely into his gunsight as he pulled up to seek his next target.  But the Japanese bombers had gone.  The survivors on the ground came out from under the fallen logs and handy holes into which they had dived.  There was the drone in the sky again. 

 “Here he is, Jill!” Harris called and Jillian's heart leapt.  The dive-bomber rumbled overhead but she saw that the wings which waggled in greeting were now marred by a row of bullet holes.  She studied the machine tensely....the rear cockpit.

  “He's waving! He's all right!”

  “They seem fine,” Harris agreed. “By God, that was a tidy bit 'o work.”

  Allan had a machine-gun mounted on a post in his rear position, and he kept one hand on it while he lifted the other in a quick salute, less exuberant than before, and she could sense his watchfulness even from a distance.  She spared a glance for the pilot in the front seat of the aircraft, a solid-looking man who darted a glance back at the wreck and its survivors as he guided his plane over the clearing. Far above, the squadron of fighters wheeled as they kept guard, but now there were only seven.

  Allan's plane turned away to the east and disappeared into the distance.  As the minutes passed, four of the fighters broke away and flew off in the same direction. But two more quickly arrived to replace them.

  “More bombers, I'm thinkin', Sky,” called Bickers.

  They all heard it.  It was a distant murmur, like the aircraft sounds which had dominated the thick air above the beach all morning. Yet this was muted as though the engines were muffled, not by distance but by being enclosed....like engines being run inside a tunnel.

  “Bejesus!” Bickers gave his customary cry once again. “Will ye look!”

  After the shocks of the past day, the terrors and the hopes, it was almost too much. Had anyone announced that he....or she, for Jillian included herself in the thought....had finally gone mad, there would have been a chorus of sympathetic agreement. 

  Over the trees came an argent cloud, a silvery overcast which blotted out half the sky.

  “That explains the aircraft,” remarked Harris. “I've seen pictures of them in the aero magazine.” But Jill was not deceived by his English aplomb.  The rapt expression on the Cox'n's face as he watched the gigantic airship said far more than his words.

  “Yank ZRS,” murmured Bickers, coming over beside them.  “That's what it is. Big bastard.”

  “What in 'ell's it doing here,” Harris replied, his own voice hushed.

  “That's pretty obvious,” Jillian said.  “Come on, grab what you want to take with you. It's time we were gone.”

  “But how are they going to....”  Bickers' voice trailed off.  The answer to his unfinished question had appeared.

  Jill had thought the R101 the biggest thing next to Castle Hill that she had ever seen, but this leviathan dwarfed its pathetic skeleton draped across the coconut trees. The giant came to a stop above the clearing.  It had turned slightly on its final approach so that its nose was facing directly into the wind.  There were six huge propellers, three to a side, each jutting out sideways from the hull on an outrigger which looked like nothing so much as an Australian windmill.  As they watched, the forward and after pairs rotated to an up-and-down position, while the middle pair remained facing aft.  Harris and Bickers launched into an intense technical discussion about vertical thrust to which Jillian only half listened.  The monster hung above them in space while the subdued sound of its engines, obviously buried deep within the hull, moaned about the tropical plain. 

  A panel the size of a barn door began opening in the belly of the great airship.  Then a pea on the end of a thread appeared, lowering through the portal toward them.  Jillian's sense of scale had been disoriented, and it was a moment before she realized that it was a rescue-cage on the end of a cable.  The line lengthened and reached for the ground.  The watchers stood transfixed as it was lowered all the way to the earth. A man stepped out.

  Then Jill was running.  As the man pulled off the flying helmet he had been wearing, she threw herself at him and was wrapped up in his arms.  Harris and Bickers grinned at each other approvingly.

  “Hello, Sailor,” she whispered as she gazed into the soft but strong brown eyes.

  “Hello, Blondie.”