only mystery was why they had not already done so. Nicolson wondered if the others knew that their hours of freedom and safety were limited, that the cat was playing with the mouse. if they did, it was impossible to tell by their behaviour and appearance. A helpless, useless bunch in many ways, a crushing liability to any man who hoped to sail his boat to freedom, but Nicolson had to concede them one saving grace: Gordon and the shocked Sinclair apart, their morale was magnificent.
They had worked hard and uncomplainingly to get all the blankets and provisions stowed away as neatly as possible, had cleared spaces at the expense of their own comfort for the wounded men ? who themselves, in spite of obvious agony, had never complained once ? and accepted all Nicolson's orders and their own cramped positions cheerfully and willingly. The two nurses, surprisingly and skilfully assisted by Brigadier Farnholme, had worked for almost two hours over the wounded men and done a splendid job. Never had the Ministry of Transport's insistence that all lifeboats carry a comprehensive first-aid kit been more fully justified, and seldom could it have been put to better use: collapse revivers, 'Omnopon,' sulphanilarnide powder, codeine compounds, dressings, bandages, gauze, cotton wool and jelly for burns ? they were all there and they were all used. Surgical kit Miss Drachmann carried herself: and with the lifeboat's hatchet and his own knife McKinnon had perfectly adequate splints iniprovised from the bottom-boards for Corporal Eraser's shattered arm within ten minutes of being asked for them.
And Miss Plenderleith was magnificent. There was no other word for it. She had a genius for reducing circumstances and situations to reassuring normality, and might well have spent her entire life in an open boat. She accepted things as they were, made the very best of them, and had more than sufficient authority to induce others to do the same. It was she who wrapped the wounded in blankets and pillowed their heads on lifebelts, scolding them like unruly and recalcitrant little children if they showed any signs of disobeying: Miss Plenderleith never had to scold anyone twice. It was she who had taken over the commissariat and watched over the wounded until they had eaten the last crumb and drunk the last drop of what she had offered them. It was she who had snatched Farnholme's gladstone bag from him, stowed it beneath her side bench, picked up the hatchet McKinnon had laid down, and informed the seething Brigadier, with the light of battle in her eyes, that his drinking days were over and that the contents of the bag, which he had been on the point of broaching, would be in future reserved for medicinal use only ? and thereafter, incredibly, had produced needles and wool from the depths of her own capacious bag and calmly carried on with her knitting. And it was she who was now sitting with a board across her knees, carefully slicing bully beef and bread, doling out biscuits, barley sugar and thinned down condensed milk and ordering around a grave and carefully unsmiling McKinnon, whom she had pressed into service as her waiter, as if he were one of her more reliable but none too bright school children. Magnificent, Nicolson thought, trying hard to match his bo'sun's deadpan expression, just magnificent: there was no other word for her. Suddenly her voice sharpened, rose almost an octave.
'Mr. McKinnon! What on earth are you doing?' The bo'sun had dropped his latest cargo of bread and corned beef to the bottom-boards and sunk down on his knees beside her, peering out below the awning, ignoring Miss Plenderleim as she repeated her question. She repeated it a third time, received no answer, tightened her lips and jabbed him ferociously in the ribs with the haft of her knife. This time she got a reaction.
'Will you look what you've done, you clumsy idiot?' She pointed her knife angrily at McKinnon's knee: between it and the side bench half a pound of meat was squashed almost flat.
'Sorry, Miss Plenderleith, sorry.' The bo'sun stood up, absently rubbing shreds of beef off his trousers, and turned to Nicolson. ''Plane approaching, sir. Green ninety, near enough.'
Nicolson glanced at him out of suddenly narrowed eyes, stopped and stared out to the west under the awning. He saw the plane almost at once, not more than two miles away, at about two thousand feet. Walters, the lookout in the bows, had missed it, but not surprisingly: it was coming at them straight out of the eye of the sun. McKinnon's sensitive ears must have picked up the faraway drone of the engine. How he had managed to detect it above the constant flow of Miss Plenderleith's talk and the steady putt-putt of their own engine Nicolson couldn't imagine. Even now he himself could hear nothing.
Nicolson drew back, glanced over at the captain. Findhorn was lying on his side, either asleep or in a coma. There was no time to waste finding out which.
'Get the sail down, Bo'sun,' he said quickly. 'Gordon, give him a hand. Quickly, now. Fourth?'
'Sir?' Vannier was pale, but looked eager and steady enough.
'The guns. One each for yourself, the brigadier, the bo'sun, Van Effen, Walters and myself.' He looked at Farnholme. 'There's some sort of automatic carbine there, sir. You know how to handle it?'
'I certainly do!' Pale blue eyes positively gleaming, Farnholme stretched out a hand for the carbine, cocked the bolt with one expert flick of his fingers and cradled the gun in his arms, glaring hopefully at the approaching plane: the old war-horse sniffing the scent of battle and loving it. Even in that moment of haste Nicolson found time to marvel at the complete transformation from the early afternoon: the man who had scuttled thankfully into the safe refuge of the pantry might never have existed. It was incredible, but there it was: far back in his mind Nicolson had a vague suspicion that the brigadier was just too consistent in his inconsistencies, that a purposeful but well- concealed pattern lay at the root of all his odd behaviour. But it was only a suspicion, he couldn't make sense of it and maybe he was reading into Farnholme's strange, see-saw conduct something that didn't exist. Whatever the explanation, now was not the time to seek it.
'Get your gun down,' Nicolson said urgently. 'All of you. Keep them hidden. The rest of you flat on the boards, as low down as you can get.' He heard the boy's outraged wail of protest as he was pulled down beside the nurse and deliberately forced all thought of him out of his mind. The aircraft ? a curious looking seaplane of a type he had never seen before ? was still heading straight for them, perhaps half a mile distant now. Losing height all the time, it was coming in very slowly: that type of plane was not built for speed.
It was banking now, beginning to circle the lifeboats, and Nicolson watched it through his binoculars. On the fuselage the emblem of the rising sun glinted as the plane swung first to the south and then to the east. A lumbering, clumsy plane, Nicolson thought, good enough for low-speed reconnaissance, but that was about all. And then Nicolson remembered the three Zeros that had circled indifferently overhead as they had abandoned the burning Viroma and all at once he had a conviction that amounted to complete certainty.
'You can put your guns away,' he said quietly. 'And you can all sit up. This character isn't after our lives. The Japs have plenty of bombers and fighters to make a neat, quick job of us. If they wanted to finish us off, they wouldn't have sent an old carthorse of a seaplane that has more than an even chance of being shot down itself. They'd have sent the fighters and bombers.'
'I'm not so sure about that.' Farnholme's blood was roused, and he was reluctant to abandon the idea of lining the Japanese 'plane up over the sights of his carbine. 'I wouldn't trust the beggars an inch!'
'Who would?' Nicolson agreed. 'But I doubt whether this fellow has more than a machine-gun.' The seaplane was still circling, still at the same circumspect distance. 'My guess is they want us, but they want us alive, lord only knows why. This bloke here, as the Americans would say, is just keeping us on ice.' Nicolson had spent too many years in the Far East not to have heard, in grisly detail, of Japanese atrocities and barbaric cruelties during the Chinese war and knew that, for an enemy civilian, death was a pleasant, a desirable end compared to being taken prisoner by them. 'Why we should be all that important to them I can't even begin to guess. Just let's count our blessings and stay alive a little longer,'
'I agree with the chief officer.' Van Effen had already stowed away his gun. 'This plane is just ? how do you say- ? keeping tabs on us. He'll leave us alone, Brigadier, 'don't you worry about that.'
'Maybe he will and maybe he won't.' Farnholme brought his carbine into plain view. 'No reason then why I shouldn't have a pot at him. Dammit all, he's an enemy, isn't he?' Farnholme was breathing hard. 'A bullet in his engine???'
'You'll do no such thing, Foster Farnholme.' Miss Plenderleith's voice was cold, incisive and imperious. 'You're behaving like an idiot, an irresponsible child. Put that gun down at once.' Farnholme was already wilting under her glare and the lash of her tongue. 'Why kick a wasp's nest? You fire at him and the next thing you know he loses his temper and fires at us and half of us are dead. Unfortunately there's no way of guaranteeing that you'll be among that half.'
Nicolson struggled to keep his face straight. Where their journey would end he had no idea, but as long as it lasted the violent antipathy between Farnholme and Miss Plenderleith promised to provide plenty of light entertainment: no one had yet heard them speak a civil word to each other.
'Now, then, Constance.' The brigadier's voice was half truculent, half placating. 'You've no right??-'
'Don't you 'Constance' me,' she said icily. 'Just put that gun away. None of us wishes to be sacrificed on the
