Tom went up later, glad to have an excuse to get out of the foul and stuffy atmosphere of the hold and have a chance to move his arms and legs.
On the deck, he found George looking after a few sick men. His patients were stretched out on the boards in the full glare of the sun. Most of them looked near to death.
‘What’s the matter with them, George?’ Tom asked.
‘Dysentery,’ sighed George. ‘Most of them won’t pull through. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole ship went down with it with the disgusting conditions on board. Either that, or we’ll be torpedoed by the Yanks.’
‘Torpedoed?’
‘Yes. They’re trying to sink all Jap ships going to Japan. There are no markings on any of them to show that they’re carrying prisoners. Loads of POW ships have already gone down. That’s why we’re travelling in a convoy.’
Tom looked out to sea, and sure enough he could see that they were part of a line of ships stretching as far as the eye could see. The ship in front was a bulky cargo ship, but the one behind looked like a destroyer, with long guns protruding from its deck.
‘But there would be no way to get out of the hold if that did happen. We’re right at the bottom,’ said Tom.
‘Yes, it’s murder. Cold-blooded murder.’
A guard doing his rounds saw Tom speaking to the orderly, and came and poked him in the stomach with a bayonet.
‘Go back. Go down. No stop here!’
Tom descended the ladder reluctantly. As the sun went down, he and the others watched through the tiny porthole as two great sacks were thrown from the deck into the sea.
‘What the hell are they?’ asked someone.
‘Bodies probably,’ Tom murmured. ‘There were some men on deck with dysentery. They looked as though they weren’t going to last long.’
The sacks bobbed on the surface for a few minutes, and then the water around them became choppy.
‘Sharks.’
They watched as the sacks were quickly pulled apart, and then disappeared into the water. The sea around them turned a foamy red.
Later that evening a bucket of rice and watery fish stew was lowered, and although it smelled foul, the men once again dipped their tin cups into it gratefully. When night came they had to stay in the same crouched positions they had been sitting in all day. The temperature, although a little cooler, was still unbearably hot. It was impossible to sleep.
Tom spent a little time making sure that his treasured possessions were on his body rather than in the pack, in case George’s predictions came true. He checked that the picture of Joy was in the pocket of his shirt; his clothes were so tattered and torn now that it was almost pointless wearing them. He hung Ian’s ring, Harry’s badge and his own Volunteers badge around his neck then slipped the brown pomelo flowers, which he had wrapped in some rice sacking in the camp, into his shorts pocket. All night he sat there, cramped and sweating on the bare boards, listening anxiously for the sound of aircraft or submarines. All he heard, however, was the chug-chug-chug of the engines turning below as the ancient ship made its laborious progress across the South China Sea.
The days wore on in exactly the same routine. Three times a day the buckets were lowered to the prisoners: latrine, water and food. In the cramped and filthy conditions, men began to get sick. Many developed dysentery. Too weak to get up the ladder, they soiled themselves, and then sat there, pictures of misery in their own filth. Others succumbed to the roll of the ocean and got seasick, retching onto the floor, so that soon the boards were slippery with vomit and shit. The smell was unbearable. Tom spent as much time on deck as he could, trying his best not to arouse the attention of the guards. At least out there he could get away from the stench of the holds.
He noticed that the amount of food in the food buckets was dwindling. More than once there was not enough left in the bucket for him to fill his cup.
‘Someone here’s taking too much food out of the bucket,’ Tom said, looking at the desperate faces that surrounded him.
A man near the ladder shook his head. ‘It’s someone on the next deck up. I saw him do it,’ he said. ‘He’s got two cups. He fills one for himself and keeps the other one to sell to whoever’s hungry later.’
‘Why the hell do they let him do it?’
The man shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like. He’s a bully.’
Tom had an uneasy feeling. He was almost sure he knew who this bully was. He decided to confirm his suspicions for himself. The next time he heard the food bucket being passed around on the floor above, he climbed the first few rungs of the ladder. He looked around at the sea of faces, some familiar, some not. They all wore the same hollow-eyed look of hopelessness. As he looked around he spotted one face that didn’t look hungry or desolate.
‘Jim Leech,’ he shouted. ‘I knew it was you. You’re taking extra food, you bastard.’
Leech stared back at him. This time he did not flinch or look away. There was a look of defiance on his face.
‘So what? There’s plenty to go round.’
‘There’s not enough down here. Everyone’s falling sick.’
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
Tom sprang forward and lunged towards Leech, but he could not get at him through the press of the bodies.
