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By Root 2692 0

in the darkness on to some rocks. He lay quietly where he had fallen for a little while, breathless with the shock and pain, thinking: ‘Singapore is done for,’ until presently he managed to shout and his ADCs, groping anxiously, located him and carried him to the motor-boat. He was laid in the bottom of the boat and presently they forged out on to the black waters, lit here and there by the fires burning on the shore all around. When they at last reached the flying-boat it was found impossible to lift Wavell into it without unshipping the machine-gun which had been mounted at the door. The Dutch crew of the flying-boat, unfamiliar with the mounting, set to work on it as best they could. At last they succeeded in removing it and Wavell was hoisted up from the swaying boat. But even when Wavell was safely aboard and had been given whisky and aspirins to dull the pain he was suffering and the sacks of government documents which Sir Shenton Thomas had entrusted to him to take to safety had been stowed beside him, the flying-boat still could not take off. The pilot reported that such was the number of small craft trying to escape from Singapore under cover of darkness he was unable to find a long enough stretch of clear water. It was not until it at last began to grow light that they eventually managed to take off for Batavia, leaving the chaos and destruction of Singapore as nothing but a tiny smudge on the horizon, insignificant compared with the vast, shining sea beneath them.

67

Matthew had returned from fire-fighting to find a note from Vera saying that she had gone to Bukit Timah village to look for a friend who might be willing to hide her from the Japanese. Matthew clasped his brow in horror when he read this. Had she gone mad? Did she not realize that she was going to what must be the most dangerous part of the Island? Neither Matthew himself, nor anyone else he met, had any clear idea of where the front line might be, but it seemed likely from the noise of the guns that the Japanese were already advancing towards Bukit Timah. He hoped that there would be road-blocks to prevent her going forward, as seemed likely. But after some minutes spent pacing about, uncertain what to do, he decided to go and look for her himself. Even though he knew that his chances of finding her in the darkness and confusion were slim, at least this would give him something to do. And so, in due course, he set out on Turner’s motor-cycle.

Matthew had only ridden a motor-cycle once or twice before and felt by no means confident that he could control this one, particularly on a pitch dark night with a masked headlight and the prospect of bomb-craters in the roads. But after five minutes practice in the compound under Turner’s tutelage, wandering a couple of times round the tennis court and through the flowerbeds in the darkness, he gripped the knob of the hand gear-lever on the petrol tank and prepared to release the clutch. The machine pounced into the road like a tiger.

In a flash he was careering up Stevens Road through the warm tropical darkness in the direction of the Bukit Timah Road. As he charged onwards his searching foot kept finding an outcrop of metal which ought to be the brake … yet when he trod on it he only seemed to go faster, and the more alarmed he became, the faster he went, not realizing that in his excitement he was involuntarily twisting the throttle with his right hand. Dark objects loomed and vanished on either side with horrifying speed. On he sped, foot still searching for the brake-pedal. At the junction with Dalvey Road he at last realized that his frenzied grip of the throttle was what was causing the machine to bolt with him. He relaxed it and managed to slow down a little, and not a moment too soon, for here there was a roadblock. A masked flashlight waved to him to stop. He drew near, his foot searching more desperately than ever for the brake as he wobbled towards it.

‘I can’t stop!’ he shouted at the dim figures standing in the road ahead. In his excitement he again forgot not to twist the hand-grip; again