Page 2

It was Mon who spotted the hut. "Look."

"It’s in ruins," said Lin. And so it was, with the walls fallen in on themselves and the roof sagging from the wooden framework. Bobby went up to the door for a brief look inside.

"There’s nothing there," he reported when he came back. "The floor’s fallen in. The odd thing is, it doesn’t really look all that old. It’s as if someone abandoned it and just let it go to hell one day."

"Maybe whoever it was got eaten by a tiger," suggested Mon cheerfully. "I forgot," he added, "no tigers in these jungles, right?"

Lin suppressed a brief shudder. "Let’s get on," he mumbled, and immediately regretted it. But Bobby did not respond with the usual blast of withering scorn.

"I wonder if there are any more houses here," he said. "Nobody would be likely to build all alone up here, would they?" But they saw no more houses, ruined or otherwise.

Overhead the clouds had gathered again and a fine drizzle began to fall. Lin cast a last look back at the house as they left. It looked somehow threatening, as if it were the spoor of a large and dangerous animal. But then trees and the gathering shadows hid the house from view.

Only minutes later it was much darker and the rain had begun to pour down. Automatically, without a word, they began looking around for shelter: a cave, an overhanging shelf of earth, anything at all. Earlier they had tolerated getting wet through, but then flight had been the only objective and they had not been quite so desperately tired.

It was Lin who spotted the shape out of the corner of his eye. "There, look. Something…"

It lay slightly higher up the slope and to their left. It bulged its cylindrical form between two thick tree trunks, its rounded nose lifted slightly above the earth. For a moment everyone froze, staring; then everyone turned towards it and began walking through the run-off up the slope.

"What is it?" asked Mon, then answered himself. "Looks like a plane."

"A very old plane," amended Bobby. They had by then reached the object and he was standing by the tip of the nose, staring down at it. The regular lines of the metal had corroded and bent, and there were rectangular places that had evidently once been filled with Perspex panels. Growing through the spaces were weeds and vines. The original colour was impossible to tell. It had all faded to a mix of rusty brown and the deep dead green of moss. The trees that must have been smashed down when it crashed had long since been replaced by new growth.

"There’s a wing" Lin said. "It’s broken, but you can see it must have been the wing." He pointed to a sharp curve of metal, like a huge sword, sticking out of the earth. "And that must have been a propeller." It was visible only in silhouette.

"Good Lord," said Bobby. "It must have been here right from the Second World War."

Fascinated, they squeezed past the trees and worked their way along the cigar shape of the fuselage. There was the hump of the cockpit, still with its windscreen intact, and a low hump like a glasshouse on the back. Much of the Perspex was still left on the framework of this. Both wings and most of the tail had broken away, but on the whole the fuselage was surprisingly intact.

"Look at this," said Bobby, pointing to a reddish splotch on the metal. It was roughly circular. "Must have been Japanese. The Rising Sun."

"Yes," agreed Lin, childhood memories of Commando comics stirring. "I remember seeing pictures of planes like this. It was some type of Japanese bomber."

Mon had ducked under what remained of the tail and now his voice came from the other side. "Come here, there is something you should see." There was an odd tone in his voice.

Bobby glanced briefly at Lin, then they both squeezed in turn to join Mon on the left side of the aircraft. "A door."

Till this moment none of them had thought of the old wreck as a source of shelter. They were still all very young, and it had been a break in the danger the monotony, and the exhaustion. But now there was a way in. They stood staring at it for long moments.

[ Continue to page 3 ]