‘Cool down, mate. Leave it. There’s no use fighting here.’
They kept pushing him away, and Tom had no choice but to step back down the ladder onto his deck. He sat there brooding. He thought about Harry and Ian, about their faces full of hope as they had set out from the camp, about their brutal execution only two days later. The scene played over and over in his mind: the two of them standing under the pomelo tree, then their bodies dancing grotesquely as the bullets hit them. He thought of Archie being dragged to the pit, of his body lying on the ground stone dead a few days later. He thought of how he had beaten Leech. He could have killed him. He wished now that he had done. If they ever got off this ship alive, he would have his revenge.
The next morning, after another dreadful night of near-suffocation on the filthy boards, Tom was desperate to get out on deck. He used the pretext of needing to use the benjo, but after having sat there for a few minutes, his backside hanging over the side of the ship, he got off and lingered on deck for as long as he could, trying to keep out of sight of the guards. He found a quiet place beside the rail and watched the waves for a while, gulping in the clean sea air. He could just make out the grey smudge of land on the far horizon, and wondered which islands they were sailing past.
He listened to the rhythmic drone of the ship’s engines, and as he listened he realised they were getting louder. Did the ship have engine trouble? A chill went through him as the drone became a deafening roar. The planes were upon them. Swarms of them, like great black birds, filled the sky, blotting out the sun. As they came over the convoy of ships, they began to dive, one after another, almost vertically, engines screaming. They dropped so fast that it looked as though they would hit the deck. As they pulled out of the dive, Tom watched in horror as one by one the bombs detached from their underside and plummeted towards the ship.
He threw himself down and scrambled to take cover under a tarpaulin, knowing as he did so that it would give him no protection. There was a series of deafening crashes around him, the cracking of beams and splintering of wood, the yells and screams of men below. The planes returned and dropped another series of bombs, blasting the funnel in two and making more great craters in the deck.
He could hear the Japanese crew and guards running about, screaming in terror. The sound of the aircraft receded and all that was left in the silence was the cracking and splintering of the stricken ship and the groans and yells of injured men below.
Tom was shaking all over. He could barely control his limbs. He forced himself out of his hiding place and stumbled over to where the top of the hatch had been. There was now a gaping hole there, with a jagged splintering edge. A great metal joist had fallen in, and some men had been crushed and mangled under the weight of it. The ladder had disappeared, and men were desperately trying to haul themselves onto the deck, clambering up on the broken beams, trampling on others in their panic. Tom put his hand out and with supreme effort pulled up one man.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said the man, and scuttled off towards the rail.
‘Hey, wait,’ yelled Tom. But the man was gone. Tom put his hands down and pulled up another man. This one stayed and helped him to heave the others on to the deck. Some helped pull their mates up, but most were anxious to get off the boat as quickly as they could.
Tom felt his strength slipping away from him. Pulling each man up was a massive effort. It was sapping his energy. There was no alternative, though. The deck was already listing badly. The ship was on its way down, and anyone left in the hold would go with it. So he carried on pulling up desperate men. His hands were wet and slippery with sweat, yet he didn’t give up. A couple of others had stayed to help him, but they weren’t working fast enough.
Tom put his hand out for the next man, and then froze.
It was Jim Leech. He was looking up at Tom with pleading eyes. Tom took his hand away and extended it to the next man.
‘Please!’ screamed Leech. ‘Please don’t leave me to die … I’ll make amends. I promise.’
Tom looked away. His wish had come true. All he had to do was to ignore Leech’s screams, and when the ship went down he would be trapped under the deck and be drowned.
He pulled up several other men, shutting his ears to Leech’s pleas. None of the other men on the deck seemed to hear him either. They were engrossed in helping others. Perhaps, like Tom, they had good reason to ignore him.
Soon all the men had been helped out of the holds. Leech was the last man alive down there. Tom stood up. His heart hardened. He would leave Leech here to die.
Tom began to walk across the deck. It was listing dangerously now. It could only be a matter of minutes. Leech’s sobs came to him from beneath the splintered deck. He hesitated. He thought of all the men that he’d seen die in the last three years: of the Bull and his mates cut down in the storm drain, of the pitiful wrecks dying in the hospital hut, of Harry and Ian, of Archie, and of the men lying crushed and bleeding beneath the beams in the hold. Suddenly, he stopped and turned. He couldn’t do it. How would he be able to face himself if he let a
