A Town like Alice

can send them down in fishing-boats, I think," he said. "There are some of those left. That's the best I can do. I haven't got a launch."
    The party were unloaded on to the veranda of the accounts office, and here they were able to stretch and sort themselves out a little. There were chatties of cold water in the office and the veranda was shady and cool. Jean and Bill Holland left Eileen sitting on the veranda with her back against the wall with the children about her, and walked into the village to buy what they could to replace the luggage they had lost. They were able to get a feeding-bottle for the baby, a little quinine, some salts for dysentery, and two tins of biscuits and three of tinned meat; they tried for mosquito nets, but they were all sold out. Jean got herself a few needles and thread, and seeing a large canvas haversack she bought that, too. She carried that haversack for the next three years.
    They went back to the veranda about teatime and displayed their purchases, and had a little meal of biscuits and lemon squash.
    Towards sunset the lighthouse-keepers at the river mouth telephoned to the DC that the Osprey was coming into the river. The Osprey was the customs launch that ran up and down the coast looking for smugglers from Sumatra across the Malacca Strait; she was a large Diesel-engined vessel about a hundred and thirty feet long, normally stationed at Penang; a powerful, seagoing ship. The DC's face lit up; here was the solution to his problems. Whatever was the mission of the Osprey she must take his evacuees on board, and run them down the coast out of harm's way. Presently he left his office, and walked down to the quay to meet the vessel as she berthed, to interview the captain.
    She came round the bend in the river, and he saw that she was loaded with troops, small stocky men in grey-green uniforms with rifles and fixed bayonets taller than themselves. With a sick heart he watched her as she came alongside, realizing that this was the end of all his endeavour.
    The Japanese came rushing ashore and arrested him immediately, and walked him back up the jetty to his office with guns at his back, ready to shoot him at the slightest show of resistance. But there were no troops there to resist; even the officer with the truck had driven off in an attempt to join his unit. The soldiers spread out and occupied the place without a shot; they came to the evacuees sitting numbly in the veranda of the accounts office. Immediately, with rifles and bayonets levelled, they were ordered to give up all fountain-pens and wristwatches and rings. Advised by their men folk, the women did so silently, and suffered no other molestation. Jean lost her watch and had her bag searched for a fountain-pen, but she had packed it in her luggage.
    An officer came presently, when night had fallen, and inspected the crowd on the veranda in the light of a hurricane lamp; he walked down the veranda thrusting his lamp forward at each group, a couple of soldiers hard on his heels with rifles at the ready and bayonets fixed. Most of the children started crying. The inspection finished, he made a little speech in broken English. "Now you are prisoners," he said. "You stay here tonight. Tomorrow you go to prisoner camp perhaps. You do good things, obedience to orders, you will receive good from Japanese soldiers. You do bad things, you will be shot directly. So, do good things always. When officer come, you stand up and bow, always. That is good thing. Now you sleep."
    One of the men asked, "May we have beds and mosquito nets?"
    "Japanese soldiers have no beds, no mosquito nets. Perhaps tomorrow you have beds and nets."
    Another said, "Can we have some supper?" This had to be explained. "Food."
    "Tomorrow you have food." The officer walked away, leaving two sentries on guard at each end of the veranda.
    Kuala Panong lies in a marshy district of mangrove swamps at the entrance to a muddy river; the mosquitoes are intense. All night the children moaned and wailed fretfully, preventing what sleep might have been possible for the adults. The night passed slowly, wearily on the hard floor of the veranda; between the crushing misery of captivity and defeat and the torment of the mosquitoes few of the prisoners slept at all. Jean dozed a little in the early hours and woke stiff and aching and with swollen face and arms as a fresh outburst from the children heralded the more intense attack from the mosquitoes that comes in the hour