When the fourth day arrived, a restless anxiety came over the British team. Each team got only two innings each, which meant that, while their first-time batting gave them a sense of hope and freedom because the game was just beginning, they were despondent and nervous the second time, because it was to be their last. But the most important thing was to stay in play as long as possible in order to keep the Kempeitai off the streets and away from the people and to give the Allied troops the maximum possible time to gather out there in the storm of war where the clock kept ticking forward. Their strategy was pure, brazen Scheherazade. Some of the Winnipeg Grenadiers, released from the camp at Sham Shui Po for the duration of the match, had brought instruments with them from the internment barracks. Whenever there was a break they took out their trumpets and clarinets and played the most infectious tunes they could remember, each one rolling into the next. They had makeshift instruments too—a double bass made from an oil drum, a guitar fashioned from a broken chair and an old tennis racquet. When they were up to bat they batted like actors, performing snippets of A Midsummer Night’s Dream between the wickets. “Ill met by moonlight, Proud Titania!” and “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” they shouted. They sang “Show Me the Way to Go Home” and “Rose Marie.” They did Fred Allen impressions. When it was their turn to bowl, they square danced while the bowler fiddled. This was something the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles particularly liked to do. The Royal Scots played along. The 5/7th Rajputs and the 2/14th Punjabs were happy to learn, as long as they got to teach bagaa when Mengha Singh went up to pitch. They played cricket as slowly as they could, and got up to as many shenanigans as possible. Noma grumbled, “Soon the childish races will be ruled by a dignified, adult one, as it should be.” But he didn’t put a stop to their games.

CHAPTER 40A CUP OF SALT

September 18, 1942

Early in the afternoon on the fourth day, the air began to grow more humid and damp than it had been the previous three days. Cheung knew what was happening. “Smells like a typhoon is coming.”

Sure enough, by late afternoon, the first few drops of rain began to fall. By cocktail hour it was coming down in sheets. Everyone rushed into the first-floor bar to have their syllabub and snack on bar peanuts. Cheung and his men poured whisked cream and rum as though the Beelzebub of the Christian Hell himself were after them, until a messenger boy appeared at the door, drenched to the bone. He called for Cheung, and when the chief steward came he said, “Please Boss, your mother and sister at Wong Nai Chung are calling for you.”