Amat’s wife, Ami, would not hear of the sailors sleeping on the beach. She insisted they stay in a spare room in her village home. They were supplied with pillows, thongs, cushions and mosquito nets in better condition than the ones they had cut up and used over the last few days. Ami gave them creams for their bruises. Bright’s injured knee had made him hobble. He was most grateful for a soothing potion on the bright red tissue, which he strapped with a clean bandage.
The sailors were taken up 400 steps carved into rock to the lighthouse and shown its operations. Tait noticed radio equipment and was excited to be offered spare parts, especially a retractable aerial that stretched to 5 feet.
He stayed with a young operator working on his radio while the others returned to the house.
‘Any news from other lighthouses?’ Bolt asked Amat
‘The Japanese shut them down or put their own operators in. We know they move through Java on bikes. They destroy the Dutch, who they hate as much as we do. But we don’t love Japanese either. We don’t want one set of masters being replaced by another.’
After an hour an excited Tait joined the others.
‘My radio is working,’ he told them, and demonstrated it by using a code to contact the operator in the tower.
The family wanted them to stay as long as they wished. Bolt, however, was keen to move on to the south of Java and the port of Tjilatjap, the original destination for Perth and Houston before they were sunk. Bolt’s hope was that they could catch a vessel to Australia from there. Tjilatjap was 220 miles along Java’s 520-mile south coast. He was nervous about the Japanese invasion and worried that the enemy could even already be at Tjilatjap.
‘It has a “jap” in its name,’ he told the others in a joke that was meant as a warning. Bolt asked Amat about the Japanese, and the Indonesian man admitted in a sad tone that they were already seeking to control other lighthouses along all Java coasts.
‘They everywhere,’ he said.
Bolt decided to stock their boats with food and water and move on.
The next morning, before first light, he walked briskly up the 400 steps to the lighthouse twice more. He then did a half-hour of exercise on the waterfront, including 100 press-ups. He followed this with a swim out about 400 yards and back. He was picking his times to exercise in the early morning and evening in a determined effort tokeep his body in reasonable shape, despite their variable diet. This had had a spectacular improvement in the last three days to the point where he had to refuse third or fourth courses from the generous Amat and Ami.
At 8 a.m. he led the sailors, with Red Lead now happily in Burroughs’s pack for the time being, down to the boats—only to find them all smashed and the stored food stolen. A note in red was pinned to a mast.
Bolt handed it to Amat. The lighthouse keeper’s forehead stretched as he read it. He stumbled over his words, telling them that the Japanese had been there in the night.
‘They offer 2000 Dutch guilders for each Allied man captured!’ he said, crestfallen. He explained that anyone caught harbouring Allies would be executed.
‘We’re going now!’ Bolt said.
Amat and Ami gave them more backpacks, food and water. Their only choice to continue their journey now they were without boats was by road. The couple then let them borrow four bicycles, and suggested they buy or barter for others. In the village, they bartered two gold bracelets and two watches for more bikes for the long-distance ride east-south-east. Bolt would not consider surrendering his gold watch, given to him by his fiancée after she won two—his and hers—in a singing competition. Instead he paid a village man in Dutch guilders for a bike that had seen better days.
The lighthouse couple’s last act was to hand Bolt a fistful of Dutch guilders. At first, he refused. But Amat and Ami insisted he take the money.
‘We have plenty,’ Ami said. ‘You need it more than we do.’
The sailors set off after tearful goodbyes to the family, who seemed resigned to their own fate. They were certain that the Japanese would come for them.
Less than an hour after the sailors had wobbled off on the bikes, three trucks full of Japanese soldiers arrived at the village. They dragged the family out of their hut and into the village square, where their sergeant, Hoto, yelled orders and had the family on their knees. He was a short man with a narrow, sharp jaw. He punched Amat and Ami, then questioned them, screaming and ranting. The couple admitted they had looked after the sailors. Their candour further enraged Hoto. Amat refused to tell Hoto which route the sailors had taken. Hoto kicked Ami, upsetting Amat, who went to tackle the Japanese sergeant. He was hammered by soldiers with rifle butts until he was semi-conscious.
The girls were screaming. Some of the soldiers asked permission to deal with them. A worked-up, angry Hoto waved a careless hand. Three of the guards, led by a most aggressive, large and chinless corporal, grabbed the girls and dragged them into the family hut. They tore off the girls’ clothes and raped them, the screaming corporal being first to attack each girl before the others.
Ami ran towards the hut, but was stopped by Hoto. She kicked at him. He took out a holstered revolver and shot her in the chest. She slumped to the ground and was soon dead. Hoto stomped in circles around the body. He fired the gun in the air. He ordered a soldier to shoot the ailing Amat. One bullet to the brain finished him. Hoto then yelled for the soldiers in the hut to bring the near-naked girls into the open. The younger two had fainted in shock. The third was sobbing with bruises around her mouth. Hoto ordered them killed. A volley of rifle shots finished them. He then directed the home be torched.
When it was ablaze, Hoto sat on a chair, breathing heavily after his manic acts. Minutes later, he led six men up the steps to the lighthouse, which was empty of the other keepers. They had escaped down a long safety ladder out of view from the square, having witnessed the mayhem in the village. Hoto supervised as the well-appointed lookout, which would have been useful to Japanese as well as Allied ships, was looted. Every piece of equipment was smashed.
Oblivious of the horrific chaos in the village, the sailors bounced along rough dirt roads. They took a pit stop after two hours in another village marked on a map given to them by Amat. Red Lead was released. She stretched her legs by shooting up a tree and attempting to catch an unsuspecting multicoloured bird, which just managed to fly away from her clutches. She made her way back to earth with a most disappointed expression. She sat close to Bolt and began a long self-clean, beginning with her inner thighs and moving on to her face.
‘I love her persistence,’ he remarked. ‘She’s winning the battle against the oil. She’ll have removed it all in a day or two.’
They were given tea by villagers. An old Javanese man rode a bike into the village. He came over to the sailors and made enough conversation in English to warn them that the Japanese were ahead of them about 10 miles. He studied their map and suggested a different route to avoid the enemy. He didn’t know if the Japanese had taken Tjilatjap yet, but did not think they had come that far.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘How many are in the area?’
‘Not many—maybe a hundred,’ he said with a careless wince. ‘You can go around them.’
This did not quite gel with the information from Amat at the lighthouse, who because of Morse code and radio communications around Java with other keepers, was better informed. Then again, Bolt mused, the old man had fresh information about an actual Japanese contingent in the area.
Bolt retrieved the refreshed Red Lead and popped her in Burroughs’s backpack. There was no bickering between Nadler and Wallis now, and they stayed 20 yards from each other as they all rode out, two by two down their new track.
An hour later they reached a further village where about twenty soldiers in green uniforms were lounging about drinking beer near three trucks. At first it was thought they were Dutch. But the sailors realised too late that they had ridden into a trap.
The men in green were Japanese.