The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (50 page)

“Skipper,” he said, “that guy wasn’t shooting.”

“Just getting a look at us,” Jim said dryly, “after all, he has friends aboard.”

“What?”
Mallory stopped. “Spies aboard here? What kind of ship is this, anyway?”

Ponga Jim ignored him. If they wanted the ship blown up, why not bomb or torpedo it? That job would have been simple for the plane they had just seen.

The only reason there could be for sparing the ship would be if there were enemy agents aboard who planned to leave the ship, and probably blow it up on leaving. But what was going on that had caused an agent to board his ship…and what was so important that the Japanese had sent out a plane to be sure of their location?

The
Semiramis
was on a course that would take her by the usual route through Makassar Strait. But he was just as sure that he no longer had any intention of going that way.

J
IM TURNED
and went up the ladder to the bridge. Frazer, immaculate in a white linen coat, turned to face him. He had been studying the horizon through his glasses.

“We’re changing course,” Jim said. He stepped into the wheelhouse where Tupa, an Alfur seaman, was at the wheel. “Put her over to fifty,” Mayo said. “And hold her there.”

Frazer joined him. “Then you aren’t going through the strait?” he asked.

“After being spotted like that,” Jim said. “Not a chance. We’re going east. I may decide to put in at Buton.”

Frazer hesitated, as though about to speak. Then he turned and walked back to the bridge.

T
WICE DURING THE DAY
, Ponga Jim changed course, but each time swung back to the neighborhood of fifty degrees. Once, standing on the bridge, he saw Lamprey looking at the sun’s position with a thoughtful expression. Obviously, the man had noted the changes of course. Rayna was watching the sky, too, but with an altogether different expression.

Millan stopped beside him on the deck after dinner. His face was troubled.

“You reckon we’ve got a spy aboard, Skipper? Should I search their cabins?”

“No,” Jim told him, “whoever it is wouldn’t have anything incriminating around. But today, we’ve changed course, so the spy will make an attempt to communicate within the next twenty-four hours, and my bet is within the next six. Then maybe something will break.”

Yet it was not until an hour later that he remembered his conversation with Rayna.

She had heard Morse code being sent…but why from the lifeboat deck? It was nowhere near the
Semiramis
’s radio room, which was occupied around the clock. Walking out to a spot on the bridge wing where he could see the spot where she stood, he realized she must have been standing just behind one of the ventilators!

Taking a flashlight from a drawer, Jim put on his faded khaki coat and picked up his cap. Silently, he stepped out on the lower bridge. There was no one in sight. He walked aft along the windward side of the main deck to avoid meeting anyone. His soft, woven-leather sandals made no noise on the steel deck. He halted in the shadows by the deckhouse. There was no sound but the rustle of water along the hull but somewhere out there were Japanese submarines, and the sleek, swift destroyers. North Borneo had fallen, Menado in Celebes had been shelled and bombed.

In a swift succession of raids, the Japanese had struck at Rabaul, in the Bismarcks, and at Sorong, a village on poles alongside the beach at Doom Island. Singapore had its back to the wall in a desperate, all-out battle for survival.

But closer another enemy waited, a more dangerous enemy because he was unknown. Yet an enemy who held in his hand not only the lives of those aboard, but the men for whom these planes and munitions were destined. And that enemy was here on this ship with them.

Ponga Jim moved past the crew’s mess unseen, and entered the rope locker.

All was still, a haunting stillness that concealed some living presence. Yet he knew there was no one in the locker but himself, it was only that he was getting closer. There was a smell of new hemp and tarred lines, of canvas and of turpentine.

Crawling around a pile of heavy line, he softly loosened the dogs and opened the door concealed there. He felt with his foot for the steel ladder, and like a wraith, glided down into the abysmal blackness of the hold.

CHAPTER III

There the dark was something one could feel, something almost tangible. Ponga Jim hesitated, listening with every nerve in his body.

Down below, he could hear the sea much more plainly and he was conscious again, as he always was, of its dark power separated from him by only a thin partition of steel. There was a faint smell of old cargoes, of copra, rubber, tea and coffee, of sago, nutmeg, and tobacco. He waited an instant in the darkness listening.

Then he heard it, the faint tinkle of metal on metal. He felt the hackles raise on the back of his neck, and he moved forward on cat feet, feeling his way by instinct through the racked torpedo bombers and cases of ammunition. In his mind he was trying to locate whoever was in the hold, to locate the man by putting himself in the man’s place.

Suddenly, he remembered. What a fool he had been! The amphibian, his own aircraft, had a two-way radio as well as a code sender!

Then he heard the clicking of the key. Crouching in the darkness just forward of the tail assembly, he tried to make out the words, but the echoes made it difficult. He made out the name of the ship,
Semiramis,
and some numbers…. A compass heading!

Jim stepped closer, putting his foot out carefully. But even as he moved, the cabin door opened. He felt rather than saw the figure and instantly, he sprang!

Yet even as he leaped something rolled under his foot and he crashed to the deck.

He heard a smothered gasp, and reached out desperately, suddenly gripping an ankle. Then a heel kicked him viciously in the head. He let go and rolled over. A pistol barrel, aimed at his head, missed and smashed down upon his shoulder.

He fell back, grunting with the pain of it, and then the same pistol caught him a glancing blow on top of the head. Momentarily stunned, he struggled to climb to his feet, his head blazing with pain.

Staggering, he fell against a packing case, and froze, listening. Jim heard no sound of retreating footsteps. Whoever he was, the man was no fool. Jim could hear nothing, not even breathing. He crept along behind the cases. He put his hand out and was startled by the touch of human flesh. In a kind of instinctive panic, he rocked back on his knees and swung with everything he had. His fist smashed into a muscular shoulder, and the man grunted. An arrow of pain slithered down his arm from a knifepoint, and he lunged close.

A fist slammed against his jaw, and he twisted, trying to catch the man’s knife-wrist. As in everything else, there is a knack to fighting in the dark, an instinctive gauging of position that comes with experience. But it was experience his opponent had as well.

He jammed a fist against a corded stomach, but took a jolting punch himself. He felt the man draw back his arm and shift balance to drive the knife home, but he fell away from the blade and hooking his toe behind his opponent’s ankle, jerked the leg from under him.

They got up together, and he took a smashing blow to the mouth then hooked a hard one to the chin, feeling the man go down under the blow.

Instantly, he dropped, falling knees first at the spot where the man’s stomach should have been, but the fellow rolled away quickly. Then there was a scuffle of feet. Sensing the spy was trying to get away, Ponga Jim grabbed for the flashlight, which had fallen from his pocket during the fray. He felt around, finding the light after a few moments. He snapped it on, his gun ready. The hold was empty. He shook his head to clear it. Was it one or two different people he had struggled with there in the dark?

Mayo swore under his breath and ran for the topside ladder. On deck, he came to a stop, groping for the rail as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the blinding sunlight. Squinting forward and aft he searched for the mysterious man from the hold. No one was nearby.

Ponga Jim stopped amidships. Brace Lamprey had come on deck and not far from him was Ross Mallory. Lamprey looked at Jim curiously.

“What happened to you, man?” he asked. “You look like you’ve been slugging it out with them!”

“I was,” Jim said coolly. Lamprey’s face was smooth, unmarked. Nor did Mallory show any signs of conflict. The two of them seemed all too cool to have participated in the fight below.

Ponga Jim went up the ladder to the bridge. Blore, one of the South Africans, came out of the wheelhouse.

“Are we changing course to go in to Buton?”

“No,” Jim said shortly, “we’re swinging wide. We’re going east, through Kelang Strait.”

Blore turned a little, his eyes intent. “That’s a long way around, isn’t it? What’s in the wind, Skipper? Do you have some mission other than delivering these planes?”

Ponga Jim shoved his cap back on his head. “My only mission is minding my own business. These planes go where they were sent, and anything that gets in the way gets smashed, understand?”

Blore’s eyes dropped a little, but his face was expressionless.

“Yes, sir,” he said sullenly. “I understand you, Captain.”

Ponga Jim Mayo walked back to the chart room. He was getting jumpy, he shouldn’t have spoken so hard to the kid.

He glanced down at the chart. Due north from Kelang Strait would take him just west of the Ombi Islands. Something stopped him cold, and he stared down at the chart, caught by a sudden thought. As he stared down at the map, he felt himself chill through and through at the realization of what was about to happen.

I
T WAS NO LONGER
a vague premonition, no longer a few scattered acts and words fitting to the hint dropped by Arnold. He could see it all, and the realization struck him speechless for the moment.

In his mind, Jim was seeing an island, a high tableland near Obi Major. Thick, dank green jungle ran down to the sea. But Jim was not thinking of the jungle, he was thinking of that tableland.

He was remembering the day he had climbed the steplike mountain and stood looking out over the top, a flat, dead-level field, waving with long grass. Eight hundred feet above the sea, it was. “Tobalai,” he muttered, “Tobalai Island!”

From outside there was the shriek of an incoming shell followed by the deep concussion of a heavy cannon. Then ship’s alarms blasted the signal for general quarters.

The waiting, it seemed, was over.

CHAPTER IV

Ponga Jim dived for the bridge. He saw, ahead of them, the low, dark profile of a submarine. In front of its conning tower a crew rushed to reload the deck gun.

“Starboard fifteen degrees,” he called out and reached for the forward fire-control phone. But something was wrong. The sub had fired a warning shot, it had not tried to sink them, and Eric Frazer was standing in the door of the chart room, one side of his face a dark and purple bruise.

Even though he was ready for it, the punch almost nailed him. Frazer threw his right hand fast and hard. But Jim’s left hook was harder.

“Never lead a right hand,” he said, and knocked the third mate down. Frazer was up like a cat, but Jim fished out his pistol and covered him. Suddenly, the ship’s heading started to swing, and Jim turned instinctively to the wheel. He was just in time to see the blow start, but too late to block it. Blore slugged him across the head with a blackjack.

Jim started to fall, and Frazer slugged him from behind. Then the blackjack fell again and Ponga Jim went to his knees, blinded with a sickening pain. He went down. Even then, his consciousness a feeble spark lost in a sea of blackness, he struggled. Someone must have hit him once more because he felt his knees slide from under him and he faded out in a pounding surf of agony.

W
HEN HE OPENED
his eyes, he was alive to nothing but the throbbing pain in his head. It felt heavy and unwieldy when he made an effort to move. His hands were tied, and his ankles also. He struggled to sit up and the pain wrenched a groan from his swollen lips.

“Skipper?” It was Brophy’s voice.

“What happened?” Ponga Jim asked. “What in blazes happened?”

“They took over the ship,” Brophy said. “They took us like Dewey took Manila. I woke up with a gun in my face, an’ they got the Gunner when he came on watch.”

“They?” Mayo puckered his brow, trying to figure it out.

“Yeah. Frazer, Lamprey, and Mallory. They had six of the South African crew with them. I heard some of them talking. I guess they are actually Boers who sympathize with the Nazis…anyway, they’re working with the Japs.”

“Makes sense,” Jim said, remembering. “I think we’re headed for Tobalai.”

“Why Tobalai?” Brophy asked.

“I’m guessing they’ve turned the top of the island into a landing field. From there they can cover any point in the East Indies, but particularly anywhere from where we are now to Mindanao.”

“That’s slick thinking…you’re probably right!”

“I don’t feel so smart,” Jim said bitterly. “A lot of good we can do, all wrapped up like premium hams.”

The door opened, and Li came in with a tray of food. The Chinese put it down carefully for two armed men stood in the door, guns ready. One was a Japanese, the other the seaman, Blore.

“Wait until I get out of here,” Ponga Jim said. “I’ll see you guys swing for this.”

“You will, eh?” Blore sneered. “You won’t be getting out and tomorrow morning what is left of the United States fleet will come steaming up through Greyhound Strait from the Banda Sea.”

Ponga Jim turned cold inside, but he kept up the sarcastic, skeptical manner.

“Yeah? So what?” he said.

A weasel-faced seaman leaned into the hatch. “Then a couple of cruisers will draw their fighters into a trap and these planes of yours attack the carriers…the crews will think it’s their own men coming back. There’s two battleships lying behind Obi Major, an’ a dozen submarines are waiting to clean up the job.”