Читать книгу Trapped in the Jungle! - Frederick Sadleir Brereton - Страница 6

Table of Contents

So much had happened in so short a space of time that, coupled with the acute need for self-preservation, it is not to be wondered at that David and Elmer and Chu, the Chinese boy with such sparkling, squinting eyes, set seemingly at an absurd angle, had little opportunity to consider matters outside their own immediate surroundings. Vaguely at the back of their minds they were wondering what fate had befallen their friend, Mr. Baines, abducted by that raucous, stunted, unprepossessing Japanese commander.

“This water question is a teaser,” growled David, peering up into the sky and shading his eyes from the glare of the sun. “It’s hot now. We shall be roasted.”

“Then we rig the sail as I said,” cried Elmer. “Lend a hand. Here’s a bit of rope, and with that we may be able to make a job of it. Gee, I’m famished too. Think of it, aboard the Mignonette we’d now be sitting down to breakfast. Hot coffee, you know.”

“Porridge, perhaps,” grinned David. “Bacon and egg if Chu was clever. And jam.”

It is one of the peculiarities of the white man that he will, so far as he is able, continue the customs he followed at home however far he be removed from it. True, some wisdom has been learned. The diet chosen in the tropics is usually lighter than that partaken of in England or America. But bacon and egg is a favourite and a common dish throughout the world occupied by the white man, and from Calcutta to Bombay, even in far hotter Madras, in many parts of the Malay peninsula, in New York, Washington, Seattle and thousands of other cities and townships and country places the well-known British egg and bacon is a favourite.

“Jam,” echoed Elmer wryly. “Jam. Butter too. And—wa-al, no use grumbling. We’ve got to face matters. But about Uncle Ted. That Jap always had a grudge against him. Ever heard of Hato, Japanese naval officer, the fellow who appears to have commanded the submarine?”

David shook his head vigorously. “Never!” he grunted. “But I’d pick him out from fifty other Japs, and what’s more I mean to.”

“Him spy,” declared Chu, laconically, picking at the frayed edge of his clothing. “Him one of the thousands of officers sent to America, to Canada, to Singapore and other little places to watch.”

“As barbers, tinsmiths, photographers, anything or any trade you care to suggest. They were at Honolulu. You could have your hair cut——”

“Or get a shave,” interrupted David, grinning, for not so much as a hair adorned his chin.

“Yes, buddy, shaved, shaved all the way through the Panama Canal, shaved and photoed in any port between San Francisco and Dutch Harbour in the north. The Japs have been spying on the white man in every corner of the East. And why?”

“Getting ready,” suggested David.

“You’ve hit it first time. Getting all set to tackle the white man, to throw him out of these parts, to drive him from the Pacific, yes, even from North America.”

“And why then should this commander fellow, Hato, abduct your uncle?” asked David.

“That’s telling. That’ll have to wait for another day, for talking makes me that thirsty,” grumbled Elmer. “And what’s more, buddy, I don’t grip the whole of the yarn. It’s sort of complicated. There’s a bit of the personal hatred of Uncle Ted by Hato. Then there’s the great secret the Jap nation is after. That’ll have to wait. What do you guess has happened to uncle?”

How could anyone answer that question, that is anyone save the commander known as Hato? The sudden surfacing of the submarine, the abduction of Mr. Baines and the obvious intention of the Japanese to destroy all who witnessed this outrageous action must have some sinister meaning. As the Pacific closed for the second time over the periscope of the pirate vessel it created an even greater mystery. Why had this thing happened to peaceful yachting people? What was the object of the abduction? And where would Mr. Baines be taken?

Actually he had been hustled to the foot of the ladder leading from the conning-tower and two armed sentries were posted before and behind him.

“Move and they shoot,” growled Hato. “Tell me, who were the boys? One is Elmer, eh?”

Alfred Baines regarded the Japanese officer coldly and made no answer.

“You say nothing? Very well. Wait! Wait till I have dealt with them. Ah! There is the bomb. Return to the place,” he cried, snapping the order at his junior while he gripped the ladder and made ready to swarm into the tower again.

Alfred Baines shivered. Not that he was cold, though be it remembered he was still clad only in swimming-trunks. Indeed, it was hot in the operations room of the submarine. But he had a lively memory. He knew the Japanese, and had reason to remember Hato.

“Pretended to be a clerk,” he told himself. “Got a job in my office as such, and quite accidentally gave away the fact that he knew something of naval matters and more about metallurgy. He was fired for spying. Yes, spying. What now is he after?”

What indeed, for Alfred Baines was not the man to confide in any but the most trustworthy, and even to his oldest friends he was generally a trifle taciturn, apt to change the conversation if it reached a point beyond which he thought it unwise to go, and capable of suppressing any individual whom he deemed to be curious. Not that he himself was a man of mystery, one of those inscrutable persons known to few if to any, who hide their thoughts under a cloud of silence. He could be excellent company, and had made a host of friends as he travelled to and fro about the world. Alfred Baines had in fact visited a majority of the countries with which we are familiar, and had often stepped aside from the beaten tracks to journey in out-of-the-way places.

To his intimates he was known as a pleasant if somewhat reserved native of Honolulu, where he supervised a pineapple plantation and spent many happy hours in the endeavour to improve that luscious fruit. His father had ploughed the first stretch of land to be put under pineapples, and like Alfred had been a wanderer. But he too was a scientist, just as was Alfred. Years before Alfred had been born he had prospected parts of the great chain of Rocky Mountains in an endeavour to discover an outcrop of the famous Californian lode. Fortune had rewarded him. The Baines gold mine became notorious for the richness of its returns, and the wealth thus created had enabled him to indulge his scientific bent to the full, and as failing health and advancing age made change of air and of scene and more leisure desirable, he had sailed for Honolulu, which thereafter became his home and his headquarters.

What more natural than that Alfred, the son, should follow in his father’s footsteps? The Californian mine provided him with dollars. The pineapple plantation gave pleasant employment and diversion, while the wonderful climate of that sunny and salubrious spot agreed with him amazingly. But the quest for metals, rare metals, took him from the slopes of the Rockies to Chili and Peru, to the vast Ural range in Russia, to the snow-bound slopes of the Himalayas, even to the centre of China, and once, somewhat daringly, to the heart of Japan. Alfred had become an authority in respect of the rarer metals. He was already credited with an epoch-making discovery. Could that be the reason for his abduction? Had his investigations led to the uncovering of a metallurgical secret which might affect the course of the great war now raging throughout Europe, and the exploitation of which might give certain victory to the nation which possessed it? Japan had waged an aggressive war against China for some years and had failed to defeat her. Only a few moments ago she had flung all the might of her air fleet against the unready and still trusting Americans at Pearl Harbour, and even at this moment the world outside Japan was ignorant of this news, of the monstrous act of treachery which had been perpetrated by a nation even then discussing peace between herself and America.

Alfred Baines winced and shivered again. This scandalous act of piracy on the high seas, leading to his abduction, to the destruction of the Mignonette—for he had felt rather than heard the detonation of the bomb—must have some sinister meaning. He was well aware that war between Japan and America was a possibility, even a probability, though to attack the mighty United States seemed to him and to the world in general an act of sheer lunacy. Yet Japan, too, was powerful, immensely powerful and dangerous, with fanatical millions eager and willing to carry out the orders of their war lords, determined to spread the sway of Japan throughout the East, worshippers of the Mikado who would leave no stone unturned, hesitate at no act of treachery however monstrous, and seize every and any object or person which promised to aid success.

“I think I see their design,” thought Alfred. “This means that they are determined on war against my country. It means that my secret must be wrested from me.”

His face hardened. The lips closed firmly together and his frame stiffened.

He heard the conning-tower hatch crash to, following the rattle of rifles. Then a sharp order was issued, and as Hato clambered down to the operations room the vessel dived.

“That is the end of the yacht,” snapped the Japanese. “She has been blown to pieces.”

Alfred regarded him stoically. “And the three who were my companions aboard?” he asked.

“Gone. Sunk. They will never speak again,” declared Hato, a malicious grin spreading across his broad face. Hato was not one of those highly educated Japanese one meets in European universities, come to suck learning from the white man, those polished, well-mannered individuals so anxious to curry favour with their fellows. Indeed, the politeness of the Jap in our midst has become a byword. They are punctilious, extremely formal, often good companions, given over much to bobbing and bowing. And often enough their features are straight and only their dusky complexion and their stunted figures declare them to have come from Nippon. But Hato was of Mongolian cast of countenance. Broad and short, he was like a powerful baboon, his jet-black hair tending to stand on end, his prominent cheek-bones declaring his origin, his eyes aslant, a mat of untidy, bristly hair adorning his upper lip. There was nothing attractive about this commander. Rather, there was something which repelled.

“Disappeared,” he added. “They were shot through and through. Sorry!”

“For what?” asked Alfred coldly.

“For disturbing your trip,” grinned Hato. “For destroying the yacht. For the young fellows. But you are saved. Good! That is a great reward. Presently we will discuss affairs. Now I shall see to your comfort. You need clothes. Well, perhaps there are some aboard which will fit you, though few Japanese are of your height. Still, you must be clothed. Then, when you have eaten and have had time to think things over you will speak. Yes, you will tell the whole story to our intelligence department. After that you will be set free. That is a bargain, eh?”

The cool, calculating reserve of the American made Hato wilt. He knew him well, had watched him during the time he had been masquerading in his employ and had learned that he was a man of determination as well as a scientist of no mean attainment. Even now, when Alfred was firmly in his hands, and would soon be facing a group of Japanese determined to unravel any secret he might possess, Hato doubted whether they would succeed.

“Pooh!” he thought, regarding the American askance and noting the firm lines about his face. “He will speak. They will make him. They have ways. Yes, ways of making the most obstinate and the most silent eager to talk.”

One of the crew appeared carrying an armful of clothes, and selecting the most likely handed them to Alfred. They were not exactly elegant, and the trousers were ridiculously short, while the sleeves of the loose naval jacket scarcely reached beyond the elbows. Still, they were clothes, and an improvement on the slender bathing garment he was wearing. Moreover, clad in these strange, ill-fitting garments he felt more at ease, better able to endure his position, better able in fact to resist any blandishments and inducements the rascally Hato might put before him. Clothes do not make the man, as the saying argues, but they do help towards his equanimity. His swimming garb had in these strange surroundings tended towards a feeling approaching inferiority. Now he felt himself again and smiled.

“You are pleased?” asked Hato.

“Precisely.”

“And you would eat. A little breakfast perhaps, for it is still early morning.”

Alfred nodded. “Exactly so,” he answered. “I am hungry.”

“Then come.”

Hato led his prisoner to the tiny wardroom of the submarine and called the mess servant.

“Coffee,” he ordered. “And perhaps an egg. Or jam. You will forgive if there are not aboard here all the foods to which you are accustomed. Rice is the staple diet of crew and officers, with little beside. Still, there are a few such luxuries as eggs. Please give your commands.”

Alfred Baines was not exactly a stoic. But he was a severely practical man and given to accepting facts where they were inevitable.

“I’m a prisoner,” he said to himself as he crammed his long frame into the cramped quarters between the wall of the wardroom and the tiny mess table. “There is trouble ahead. Stormy days one would imagine. The best thing to do is to eat and rest and make ready. But I’m troubled about those boys. I’ve had my day. But they are mere youngsters. It is horrible, ghastly to think that they have possibly been murdered by this scoundrel Hato.”

Well might his thoughts be occupied with the fate of Elmer and David, to say nothing of Chu. For dangerous though his own position was in that submarine, he was infinitely safer for the time being than they were. Thrusting forward under water for a while, and later on the surface, the vessel gave security as it sped forward to some destination as yet unknown to him. But contrast that condition with that of David and his American chum, adrift in the wide Pacific, in a cockleshell of a boat which because of the damage it had suffered was decidedly unseaworthy, and which, moreover, was as bare as any Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

They were indeed a forlorn little party of castaways. Huddling beneath the sail rigged from mast to thwarts, for a red-hot sun sent its blazing rays down upon them, they sat and watched and pondered.

“Ships,” said Elmer after a while, pointing eastward. “Several of ’em.”

Far away on the horizon were more smudges of smoke. Not the clouds one might expect from coal-burning steamers, but a wispy, smoky haze given off by the funnels of oil-burners.

“Jap warships, shouldn’t wonder,” he ventured. “Are those birds?”

“Airplanes, master,” declared Chu, shading his eyes.

They said of the Chinaman that he could see farther than anyone they had yet encountered, and perhaps he was right. The birds, they had seen half an hour earlier swarming about the distant smudges of smoke might have been, and probably were, Japanese airplanes.

“Heard gun-fire too, masters,” said Chu. “Listen now. There! Bang, bang, bang! You hear?”

Very faintly across the wide stretch of water came the sharp, staccato notes of what appeared to be heavy gun-fire, and as the minutes passed and those distant airplanes so much resembling birds swarming above what must be ships became more clearly visible, one swooped into the sky with black smoke trailing behind it.

“That proves the case,” gasped David. “There’s fighting going on.”

“Honolulu,” growled Elmer. “They’re attacking Pearl Harbour. What do you think of that now? Attacking America, and only yesterday we heard on the Mignonette’s radio that Jap envoys were talking peace to the President at Washington. Yep, talking peace. And—there she goes. That plane’s dived right into the sea.”

“What’s it all mean?” gasped David. “It can’t be——”

“You’ve said it,” drawled Elmer. “It’s war, red war between America and the Nips. I’d give a lot to know what has happened at Pearl Harbour. The people there hoped for peace. They had no thought of an attack and felt safe, at least while peace talks were in progress. But supposing they’ve been attacked. Gee!”

He ended the sentence with a shrill whistle. Well he might, for that morning had indeed brought sudden disaster to Pearl Harbour. The place, the garrison, the ships and their crews and a peaceful, unsuspecting population had been mangled.

“Let’s hope they don’t spot us, if those ships are really Japanese,” said David. “Say, Elmer, about this question of drink and food. I put drink first, for a fellow can get along without food for a time. But no drink, with all this salt water round us too. Not so good, eh?”

It was anything but good. It was a desperate situation, which had been faced already in this stupendous war by very many shipwrecked people, by the crews of vessels torpedoed by German and Italian submarines. This was a war to the knife. Ships were not called upon to surrender. They were sunk out of hand and crews which might escape into their few surviving boats were left to fend for themselves. Sometimes even they were hooted and reviled by the crews of the submarines, surfacing after the torpedo had struck home and sent the ship to the bottom. War to the knife, yes. War against women and children, for many a boatload of men, women, and children, had put off from a sinking vessel and had faced the perils of the open ocean, with little food aboard perhaps, a slender supply of water, and no rescue within sight. A ghastly band had perished.

“Wa-al, it’s just bad, that’s all there is to it,” growled Elmer, his brow knotted as he pondered the situation. He sat there on the thwart, in the shade of the awning, staring at the distant smudges of smoke and at the airplanes still circling about their carriers. Elmer was a gallant-looking fellow. Even though only so slenderly clad he was a fine figure of youthful manhood. Or perhaps the very absence of clothes displayed his elegant and powerful proportions to greater advantage. Perhaps he was close to his eighteenth birthday, a tall, broad-shouldered, athletic-looking American. He was fair, and the tan on his face made him appear still fairer.

“Got this yellow hair from a Scandinavian ancestor,” he’d say with a delightful grin when the subject was mentioned. “Good enough for him. That goes with me, too.”

Elmer might be nearly six feet in height, upstanding, light on his feet, narrow at the hips, quick in movement but given to rather drawling speech. His sunny features and his ready and friendly smile helped to provide him with many chums, who soon learned that beneath the easy manners and the happy outlook of their friend there was character, a sturdiness and a staunchness which went well with his slowness of speech.

Elmer liked to sit back as it were and debate a matter carefully, to scrutinise the pros and cons. But present him with a sudden crisis and he became a man of action. In fact he was not unlike his uncle Alfred. He was just a younger edition of that cool, calm, reflecting individual, with the same friendly outlook on life, unspoiled by his fortunate position and wise beyond his years because of the many opportunities which wide travel had given.

David was an altogether different sort of person, though to be sure his slenderly garbed exterior helped as in the case of Elmer to show to advantage his active figure. But he was lightly built by comparison, not so broad of shoulder nor so tall as yet, for he was only just turned seventeen years of age, and whereas Elmer was unusually fair, David was dark. But he had the English bloom in his cheeks, was in fact a most attractive youngster, and was withal gay and lighthearted when times were good and prosperous, and was no coward, as recent events had proved, when disaster threatened or suddenly overtook them.

“Just bad, that’s all there is to it,” grunted Elmer.

“Lots of folks have had to face the same position,” reflected David. “It might rain, eh? We’d be able to catch water in our awning.”

“Sure,” grunted Elmer. “But it don’t rain so much hereabouts, except sometimes, and then it comes down fit to drown you. It’s no water one second and oceans of it next. Yes, we could catch some in the awning and fill ourselves with as much as we can take. There’s no can aboard to store it. But there—rain—don’t look like it, does it?”

Chu sat in the stern of their rickety craft, watching, listening, now and again interjecting a remark, still picking at the frayed edge of the loose blouse he was wearing. It was of brilliant red colour, for bright things, like toys, please the happy minds of the Chinese. Presently he unravelled a brilliant strand and held it up for inspection.

“Perhaps that provide the water. P’raps food too,” he laughed.

“Now, see here, Chu——” began Elmer.

This flippant behaviour of the Chinese boy irritated him. Besides, in times of adversity, when danger threatens, it helps to soften the situation if one can indulge in sharp words.

“This thing means life and death. See? If there’s no water we’re next door to done. You get that?”

“Just a second or so,” said David, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. “This fellow Chu is up to something useful. He’s not a fool, and not the one to joke when we’re all in a tight corner. What’s up, Chu?”

The Chinaman’s eyes rolled. He smiled indulgently at his two young masters and then, turning his back on them bent and fumbled beneath the stern board. A moment or so later he turned again and once more displayed the scrap of brilliant cotton he had unravelled.

“See, masters,” he gurgled in his sing-song voice. “No water. No food. But fishing-lines on board. But no bait. Well, in China boys tie scarlet cotton to their hooks and fish. Supposing we do the same. Same as you see here. P’raps fish bite and come on board. Then there is food, eh? Food and drink. You no believe that p’raps. But it’s all true. Fish give food and drink and will keep us plenty good till someone finds us.”

The fellow proved a genius. To the highly sophisticated perhaps the eating of raw fish causes a shudder. Yet our Scandinavian friends devour iced, uncooked herring with gusto. It is a luxury they delight in. Chu showed the way to David and Elmer. He had no scruples and no hesitation; and, moreover, he was a masterly fisherman. This Pacific was packed with fish, and the brilliant strip of cotton attracted them as though it were a magnet. Then, once the first feelings of revulsion were overcome, this raw fish diet proved both refreshing and palatable, and it instantly satisfied their thirst.

The clever Chu had in fact given the whole party a new lease of life. But, artful and clever though he was, he could not lessen the danger of their situation. They were still adrift in a boundless ocean, with a shallow, rickety cockleshell between them and destruction, and days might pass, even weeks, before succour could reach them.