“My dear chap, no one would be ass enough to send a signal in the name of another ship. Too easy to do what you suggest — check! Besides, the Tungtai would be keeping her own listening watch. She’d pick up the transmission herself and query it on the air.”
“Yes, I dare say, but it would help to set my mind at rest. Perhaps they wouldn’t realize I’d got such a suspicious mind!”
The Captain grunted and turned away irritably, but he gave the order to have the message checked. The call-sign of the Tungtai was made and acknowledged quickly. She repeated her original signal word for word and added:
SEAMAN NOW WORSE PLEASE HURRY
Sir Donald’s face set grimly and he snapped into the telephone to the radio office: “Make, New South Wales will be with you soonest possible.” He turned to Shaw. “Well— that’s that.”
Shaw, meanwhile, had been doing some fast thinking. He said, “Very well, sir. But would you meet me on one point?”
“What is it?”
“I’d like air cover. May I signal my contact in Sydney and ask for aircraft to meet us in the rendezvous position? If we’re covered… we may even get this thing settled once and for all.”
“You just don’t believe in this call, do you?” Sir Donald asked.
“No, I don’t, sir.”
The Captain frowned, but said: “Well, you can have your air cover, Shaw. I’ve no objection to that.”
“Thank you, sir.” Shaw went below then, encyphered the signal. If some poor so-and-so really was dying out there in the waste of seas, he could only beg his pardon and hope the liner would get there in time. Nevertheless, he felt that the job was crystallizing at last. He had to admit that to some extent at least he was working on instinct but, like Latymer, his instinct seldom let him down. That was one of the things about this game — without a flair for inspired guessing and an ability to act on one’s intuitions, you were lost half the time, you never got anywhere…
That night Shaw slept very little. He lay awake for some hours listening to the surge of the water, feeling the quiver of the racing ship as she cut through the seas, a huge, lighted bulk thrusting the water aside, pounding on to — what?
At dawn Shaw stirred from what was by now a heavy, tired sleep. The curtain on his door was billowing out a little in a draught coming through the slats of the jalousie. He got up, pulled down the jalousie, looked out at the lightening sea. There was a fresh breeze ruffling it up into little furrows. They should be sighting the Tungtai about now. Shaw pulled on shirt and trousers quickly, and then spun the chambers in his revolver, loaded it, slipped spare rounds into his pocket. Then he fastened the shoulder-holster and slipped his light jacket on. He left the cabin, went along the silent alleyways and up on deck to the bridge.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Soon after Shaw reached the bridge, the officer-of-the-watch reported a smudge of smoke low down on the horizon to the south-east.
They looked ahead through glasses and within a few minutes a ship was seen plainly. She was a tanker and she was travelling fast; and she was alone.
A moment later she began flashing.
The officer-of-the-watch reported: “Tungtai, sir. Made her signal letters. She requests instructions for transfer of the injured man.”
Sir Donald, with an ‘I-told-you-so’ look at Shaw, said: “Very well. Tell her to approach and lie off my port side and be ruddy careful how she comes up. Tell her I’ll send a boat across.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The orders were passed to the Tungtai and within twenty minutes the covering aircraft requested by Shaw had arrived and made contact by signal, and the tanker was lying-to a couple of cable-lengths off the New South Wales with the plane zooming low over her; and a boat was being lowered from the liner to go across with the doctor. With them was Shaw, on the lookout for trouble still. He and Kelly, the liner’s Senior Second Officer who was in charge of the boat, were both armed. The decks were lined with onlookers until the Staff Commander cleared all passengers away, for the weight of bodies was giving the liner an awkward list.
As they pulled away, making for the tanker’s pilot-ladder just for’ard of her bridge, Shaw watched the yellow faces peering down from the Tungtai’s decks. Soon the boat was alongside and Shaw climbed up. Kelly, Dr O’Hara and two seamen came up behind him, and a Neil Robinson stretcher was lifted from the boat on a heaving line.
At the top, Shaw was met by a Chinese officer. All smiles and geniality, this man said in broken English: “Thank you for coming so fast. The man is badly hurt.” Even now Shaw felt surprise at that. He asked,
“You really have got an injured seaman aboard?”
“Certainly.” The officer looked at him oddly. “Come with me to see the Master.”
Shaw and the two British officers followed him up ladders to the tanker’s wheelhouse where a squat, ugly man stood looking out through the for’ard screen. He turned as Shaw came in, and he and his officer spoke rapidly together in Chinese. Then the Master turned to Shaw, smiled and bowed. He said, “You are most good, to come to us. Please carry my felicitations to your Captain.”
Shaw said, “I’ll do that. But first I want to have a look at that injured man of yours.”
“Yes, certainly. He is in his quarters, waiting for your doctor to come.” The Master gestured to one of his hands. O’Hara and Shaw, leaving Kelly on the bridge, followed the man down a ladder and aft along the flying-bridge which led above the tank-tops to the crew’s accommodation in the stem superstructure. O’Hara had the stretcher with him. They were taken to a doorway where they were met by a big, raw-boned Chinese in dirty blue jeans and a peaked cap. This man, who appeared to be a man of authority, probably the bos’n, led them down a ladder into a mess-room con-taming a single long table and many wooden bunks lining the bulkheads. The place was close, smelly; the atmosphere could have been cut with a knife. Men lay in the bunks, smoking but otherwise inert like corpses. There was an overpowering opium smell. The place gave Shaw the shivers. The injured man was pointed out to them, and they went quickly to the bunk-side.
Gently, O’Hara moved the man. There was a long-drawn groan; Shaw’s face went white. Quickly O’Hara assembled a hypodermic, cursing at the filthy condition of the room. He plunged the needle into the man’s arm, muttered: “That won’t put him right out, but it’ll make the end easier.”
“You don’t think he’s going to last, then?”
“Last!” O’Hara gave a grim laugh. “We might just as well have saved our time so far as saving his life goes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, we can’t leave him in this filth. Can you give me a hand? I want to roll him on to his side so we can ease him back on to the stretcher.”
“Sure.” To O’Hara’s instructions, Shaw rolled the man towards the bulkhead. Yellow faces leered at them through the murk, through the haze of foul smoke. Shaw sweated in the heat and stench, sweated with something more than heat as he saw the man’s injuries. The back seemed to be one whole purple bruise, and the filthy blankets were clotted with blood which stuck them fast to the flesh. Quickly O’Hara cut away the free material, leaving the adhering parts for the time being. He said,
“If ever we get him back aboard, we can remove that. Too painful to do it now…” He peered closer, shone a torch on to the man’s back. Then he caught his breath, whistled. After a careful examination he said, “I don’t like the look of this lot at all.”