The skipper of the Aiko Maru saw his dory crews cut and run and sounded the alarm. The longliner was waiting just beyond the six-mile limit. He scanned the radar but could pick up nothing that would indicate a patrol boat or Sunderland. None of the lookouts had spotted anything, nor had the representatives ashore radioed in to say that the patrol boat at Devonport had slipped out during the night. Yet the skipper knew his crews would not run without good reason.
The number four and number three boat had cleared the six-mile limit when he heard a lookout call down on the intercom. He raced to the window and looked astern. He strained his eyes to see it, then spotted it, low and hugging the coast, using the land mass of Great Barrier to hide from his radar. Where were the number one and two boats? Half a mile astern and closing rapidly. They were safe. Just. Shimojo Seiichi breathed a sigh of relief that the last working day of their tour of duty would not end in disgrace, but he was curious. How had his dory crews known about the Sunderland?
Red throttled back as the more powerful dories left him in their wake, hands shaking from rage and helplessness. “Bastards!” he screamed. “Bloody bastards!” His boat was no match for the Japs’ outboard motor-powered dories and he knew it. Even at half throttle their motors could leave him floundering in their wake. His fists clenched in frustration and his shoulders shook. He tried to pull back from his anger because he feared the consequences. But he was too late. Already his chest was tightening, his throat contracting. His breath came in sobs and he could feel the panic coming on again. He began to battle for breath, to fight the panic rising inside him. Cold sweat prickled his body, his hands turned clammy and the shaking intensified. Blood pounded in his temples and roared in his ears.
“Bastards …” he cried desperately, but there was nothing he could do. It had happened often enough before and he knew there was nothing he could do. His vision blurred and he was back on the railway with his mate Archie, and the Big Bash Artist and imminent death. He could feel the heat and heavy, water-laden air. Taste his fear and helplessness, too weak to cry out, too weak to stand. His hand went up to Archie. For help? For comfort? Reaching, reaching, for his mate and protector before the bullet’s hot passage ended his life. Archie could not save him this time, nothing could. He saw the little man with the long rifle and prayed that he would pull the trigger and end his suffering. Pull! Pull now! But it always ended the same way, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
He knew the moment would pass and begged God to let it pass quickly. But it would never pass completely. The shadow would remain, never entirely out of his mind, never far away, always poised to haunt and claim him whenever it chose. His burden, his guilt, his nemesis. A thunderous roar filled his ears, and the air around him pulsed and beat down on him in waves. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed. Archie was barking. Barking. Barking. Cautiously he opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented. He cowered down as the monster passed directly overhead. It took him a few moments to comprehend, to clear his mind and realize the enormity of the thing he had done.
“Nooooo … !”
He watched the lumbering seaplane swoop low overhead, knowing how the aircrew would be cursing him. He smashed his fist into the helm console. The Japanese had won again and it was all his fault. He watched the big Sunderland turn in a slow arc and pass once more over the Japanese longliner. It banked toward him no more than two or three hundred feet above the water so that he could clearly see the cameras mounted in the forward dome where the nose guns would normally be. It was also close enough for him to see the gloved fist shaking at him from the copilot’s window.
He collapsed backward onto his seat in despair. They’d set a trap for the Japs, and he’d sprung it prematurely. Dear God! His hands still shook from the attack he’d had, and he still felt light-headed. Dear God! Would there ever come a time when he was not at war with Japan? He spotted a buoy floating off to starboard, seized upon it as his salvation. There was work to be done and he needed it. Work was his sanctuary. So long as he could work he could keep control. There’d be time for recriminations later.
Red began the task of hauling in the miles of abandoned longlines. Without a winch to help him, the work was slow and back-breaking. He knew the lines would be heavy with snapper because he’d planned to fish there himself. He threw the dead and near-drowned fish into his fish boxes and set free all those he found that were still in reasonable condition. He could afford to release the live fish because he knew the proportion of dead ones would increase the farther he worked out from shore. The snappers’ air sacs would rupture in the haul up from the deeper water. The dead fish from the first line half filled his boat despite the fact that he’d thrown forty to fifty percent back. The efficiency of the Japanese fed his bitterness.
It took him all morning to retrieve the remaining lines, setting free the few survivors and throwing the remainder overboard for the sharks and stingrays, the octopi, crabs and the crayfish. The second line had filled his boat, but Red wanted the remaining lines out of the water where they could do no more harm. The slaughter and waste appalled him.
He regretted the fact that he hadn’t brought ice with him, because now he had no option but to motor straight around to the fish processing plant at Okupu. He couldn’t allow the fish he’d kept to add to the waste, but he was also concerned about Bernie. It would be evening by the time he got back, and the old man would have been on his own all day. Red wondered briefly if the Scotsman had thought to take Bernie something, then dismissed the thought. There was a better chance of the sun rising in the west and the Japanese fishermen becoming conservationists. He fired up his diesel and set off to Okupu, fish piled high in his boxes, keeping cool under soaking-wet sugar sacks. The longlines were piled high in the bow. Nothing was wasted. He wished he’d left Archie behind again to keep Bernie company.
“That you off Aiguilles this morning?”
Red looked up into the smiling face of Jack Lampton and discovered the bad news had preceded him.
“Whole island’s talking about you.”
Red threw him his bow line. The low tide meant that Red would have to manhandle the fish boxes high over his head to lay them on the jetty. Given the weight of them and the fact that his back hadn’t yet forgiven him for his earlier exertions, he knew it would be no easy task.
“Navy wants a word with you, too.”
“Give us a hand with these boxes.”
“Hang on. I’ll get you a cray tank. Off-load them into the tank and we’ll haul them up with the winch.” The fish factory wasn’t really set up for fish but for crayfish—the delicious red crays they sent to the mainland whole, and the giant packhorse crays, which they tailed first. But Jack had the means to help the snapper fishermen and make a few pounds for himself in the process, so he did. He was a young man in his early thirties, married with two small kids, and determined to make a go of the factory, even though everyone said it would fold soon enough, which is what usually happened to business ventures on the Barrier. He looked at the load of fish as Red transferred them into the steel cray tank. “You’ve been busy.”
“Japs have been busier. There were four dories, Jack, four lines apiece, and they were using those double-barbed hooks. They hardly ever missed. Snapper won’t stand a chance if they keep this up.”
“Bastards.”
“I freed the live ones and took all the dead fish I could, but I had to throw ten times as many away. Kingfish, kahawai, gurnard, trumpeter, trevally and blue cod as well as snapper. Would’ve given you a yell, but by the time you got there the sea lice and crabs would’ve ruined them.