ABSTRACT
On Wednesday 18 February 1942, in that strange light that comes just before daybreak in the tropics, Charles Stewart was standing anchor-watch on the troopship Zealandia. The Zealandia, which before the war had been a coastal trader, had just returned from taking the first ship-load of evacuees to the south and she was riding gently at anchor in Darwin harbor. The aircraft flew north-east over Bathurst Island, extinguishing their navigation lights as soon as they were out of sight of any curious plane-watcher in Darwin. An hour later both pilots had landed safely on Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi and were being de-briefed by Commander Minoru Genda, the brilliant planner who had orchestrated the raid on Pearl Harbour ten weeks earlier. The fifth columnist, probably a Chinese, who had operated freely in Darwin since the round-up of all Japanese nationals had confirmed that the convoy had not slipped quietly out during the night and that no new reinforcements had brought in.
