The Story of Dr. Wassell Page 11

  The Janssens stayed four hours in the little harbor. During this period an air-raid alert sounded from somewhere in the hills behind the village; all on board then waited tensely under cover for a quarter of an hour. No planes appeared, and no all-clear was sounded; presently, however, the various tasks of the occasion were resumed. But a few more passengers decided to leave as a result of this added scare; those jungle-clad hills seemed so much safer than the Janssens . One could lose oneself up there while the bombs fell, whereas on the Janssens there was nowhere but the tiny prison of decks, the awful claustrophobia of life on a slow-moving target.

  But there were things to do besides disembarking those who wished it, and the chance was taken to do them during the enforced delay. Materials were sought for repairing the riddled lifeboats, food and fresh water were taken on board, but there was one thing nobody seemed to have in that little place—a map of the seas and islands from Java southward.

  The doctor also did a very simple but necessary domestic thing—he washed his clothes as well as he could and put them on again when they had dried sufficiently in the sun. When some of the men found him at the job and kidded him about it, he answered: “Listen, boys, this isn’t the first time I’ve done the family wash.” (And it was true, for sometimes back in his early medical days in Arkansas he had helped hardworking women with their housework when he had called on them as patients. All of which had been unhelpful to his reputation as a doctor, though it had won him the good will of many persons whose good will could not help him.) But he joined in the men’s amusement when he put on his clothes again and found they had considerably shrunk. It was a good thing to have something to laugh about during those strange tense moments.

  Those who stayed on hoard watched the crawl of the sun across the sky, and the crawl of the moments on their watch faces, watched also the long low line of hills whence planes might come at any one of those moments. But to the doctor, as he waited and washed, and then laughed a little, there seemed a new note in his own personal tension, and that was a deep unspoken companionship with the men who now waited with him. He felt closer to them than ever before, and sensed that they also, behind their jokes and kidding, were feeling closer to him. It was a curious, warm, satisfying emotion, to which anxiety added a tang.

  During that long wait and while a second air-raid alert was sounding, Wilson said jocularly: “Well, Doc, are you still sure we’re doing the right thing?”

  “I’ll tell you that when we get to Australia,” answered the doctor, in the same mood.

  “I notice you say when , and not if .”

  The doctor smiled. “I hadn’t noticed. But I’m glad I did say it. Maybe it’s a good omen.” He added: “And there’s another thing. One of these days our boys’ll get back to Java, and I’d sure like to be with ‘em. Yes, sir, I would indeed…”

  But there seemed no good omen in the moon that rose as the Janssens put out of the little harbor. It was a full moon, in a perfect sky, and to the doctor and his seven men it looked the biggest moon they had ever seen. It shone strong and yellow over land and water, marking the hills and the village and the receding beaches almost more clearly than daylight, for then there had been a touch of heat haze above the jungle. But now every line was etched black and clear, and every surface had a pale sheen especially the cleared decks of a ship as she rode out to sea. And there was not a breath of wind, or more than a ripple stirring, save where the Janssens’s wake laid a gleaming comet’s tail behind her.

  Everyone said, fatalistically: “They’ll find us—they can’t help finding us. We haven’t a dog’s chance.”

  But everyone added: “All the same, though, I wouldn’t be back on land where those others are.”

  For the people on the Janssens were now a different crowd—they were the hardened gamblers who double their stakes when the timid ones are out of the game.

  The Janssens was different also. To begin with, there was room oh her and the men from the Marblehead could have moved into cabins if they had wished. But they were not keen. The cabins were small and stuffy, and the bunks smaller than the mattresses; whereas the decks were cool and wide and accessible. Now that repairs had been made, everyone could be assigned a place in the lifeboats, and to the men from the Marblehead one of the advantages of sleeping on deck was that their own lifeboat was only a few paces away. They thought these few paces might be important.

  The doctor, however, who had spent the previous night on a chair in the smoke room, accepted the offer of a cabin within easy reach of his men; he would have to share it with two others, one of them a Dutch padre, he was told, but he said: “Sure, I don’t mind that—I’ve known a good many padres in my time.”

  As the moon rose higher and brighter, the fact that the Janssens was no longer crowded made it seem almost empty. Sonic of the men from the Marblehead who could walk actually circumnavigated the whole deck, and in the dining saloon it was now possible to sit down at a table instead of being served cafeteria-wise. But the food was late in coining and, for once, badly cooked. The doctor ate a little himself and saw that his men had enough, then he settled them comfortably on their mattresses and advised them to go early to sleep. He was glad to note that all seemed better physically, and he thought that in an emergency he could probably get them into a lifeboat in time.

  But planes, of course, would not give one any time. Everyone knew that, and small knots of people stood about on deck after dinner watching the sky and the horizon. They did not all admit that they were doing this; they said it was such a beautiful night, so cool and fresh and moonlit, it was a pity to go inside. But the fact was, they did not want to go inside. And almost all of them, without comment, had put on life jackets.

  The doctor noticed that the girl missionary, McGuffey’s friend, was among those who had stayed with the ship, and he told her he was glad.

  The doctor also noticed that both the newspaper correspondent and the Dutch boy who was studying to be a naval officer had stayed on the ship, and to each of them also he said he was glad.

  Towards ten o’clock a Dutch officer went around amongst the passengers with word that Captain Prass would again like to meet them all in the smoke room immediately. When the doctor got there he found the Captain scowling down from the platform on which, in happier days, a small orchestra had functioned. He spoke a few sentences in Dutch that sounded ferocious enough; then he switched to his hard-clipped English and began what was evidently both a translation and an amplification. He declared that the Janssens was now heading due south, out to sea, and would reach Australia within ten days—barring unforeseen events. At that he glared as if defying them to occur. And he added, with a special glare to the doctor: “I am glad that the wounded American sailors are with us. They show courage. But courage is not enough. We must pull one another together.” (The doctor thought he probably meant “pull ourselves together.”) “We must work. We are not numerous enough for this ship unless all take a hand. For that reason you must consider yourselves under my orders—passengers and crew alike—no ranks, no exceptions. I shall set watches and duties for all. And the women must work too—we need cooks and helpers in the galley. You understand?” He concentrated himself into a final glare that seemed to convulse his whole body, then shouted as he marched out: “Some of you begin by clearing up this room. Never in all my life at sea have I permitted such a state of affairs on board a ship!” And he pointed with a swift backward fling to the litter of blood and cigarette butts and broken beer bottles that lay on the floor under the portrait of Queen Wilhelmina.

  When he had gone everyone felt much better, not only because he had gone, but because he had talked to them like that. It had been tonic, electric, dynamic. The doctor turned to his neighbor, a tall, broad-shouldered Dutchman whom he had not met before, and said cheerfully: “Well, what about it, brother? Shall we set the example?”

  The man agreed, so during the next hour, while the Janssens rolled gently over the waves, the doctor and this Du
tchman fell to with mops and pails and brooms, and by midnight they had the smoke room almost spick-and-span, except for a stain that would not come out of part of the floor. The two men had not talked much, chiefly because they had been too busy, but now it seemed natural for the doctor to invite the man to his cabin for a nightcap. “You see,” he added gleefully, “I’ve got a bottle of Scotch somewhere in my bag…”

  “Oh, no,” protested the other, emphatically. “You must come to my cabin. I have some Bols gin—very good. And my name is Van Ryndt.”

  The doctor responded with his own name, but continued to argue in favor of himself as the host. Presently they tossed a coin that decided in favor of the Dutchman. On the way to his cabin they passed the men from the Marblehead , and the doctor, peering to see their faces in the moonlight, spoke some of their names softly to himself.

  “You like these men a great deal?” queried the Dutchman.

  “Sure, I like them all right—they’re my men—my men—my job, if you look at it that way. I’d have to like ‘em, anyway.”

  The other mused thoughtfully: “You spoke their names as if—well, it reminded me of saving the heads on a rosary…somehow.”

  The doctor did not see much similarity. “I spoke their names because I wanted to check up if they were all there—and by golly, one of them isn’t…McGuffey, of course.”

  “What?”

  “I tell you, if there’s any place that boy can go where he shouldn’t be, you bet he’ll find it…Excuse me, but before we do anything else we’ve got to find him.”

  They found him some distance away, in the shadow of one of the lifeboats. He was sitting with the girl on a heap of coiled rope.

  “Okay,” muttered the doctor, checking himself. “I guess we can leave him there.”

  “You think he is all right?”

  “I’m dead sure he’s all right. And who wouldn’t be?”

  “Pardon—I do not fully understand.”

  “Okay, I say, okay,” repeated the doctor, feeling it might be a little indelicate to pass on what exactly was in his mind at that moment. But he smiled and took the Dutchman’s arm as they continued on their way to the latter’s cabin. Not till they were entering the doorway did the doctor make a belated discovery. “Why, this is my cabin!” he exclaimed, staring round and recognizing his own suitcase.

  “Then you must be the American doctor?”

  “Sure, that’s what I am.”

  There was another man already in one of the bunks, fast asleep and snoring. For some reason the doctor thought this must be the Dutch padre, until his companion said: “You will pardon him—he is one of the ship’s officers who is very tired. He was watching for the submarines all day.”

  The doctor then grasped the inescapable logic of the situation. “Then you must be the padre?”

  “That is right. Are you surprised?”

  “Well, I guess it was the way you knuckled to at that clean-up job…Sort of didn’t put the right idea in my mind.”

  “Oh, but I have often done that in my own church. It is—it was, I mean—a very poor church financially and I do not think there is any shame in physical work.”

  “You bet there isn’t,” answered the doctor, and began to remember incidents in his own life during his first medical practice—the way he had chopped wood and cooked his own meals because he couldn’t afford help. This led to a pleasant exchange of reminiscence over the drinks, and it was past midnight before the doctor felt the first faint onset of drowsiness. And then he thought of something else. “Just an idea, Padre,” he said, “but how’d you feel about us having a prayer, tonight before we turn in?”

  “Certainly, Doctor. I always do that myself—but in Dutch, of course. If you would like to say your own prayer meanwhile in English…”

  The doctor thought this was a very reasonable solution of the language problem, so they both knelt by the side of the bunk and prayed in low voices against the deep basso profundo of the third man’s snores. The doctor said the Lord’s Prayer first of all, but it did not last out the length of the padre’s, so he mumbled on: “Oh God, we thank Thee for keeping us safe so far. Oh God, keep on keeping us safe. Give all the boys a quick recovery, and look after Renny, and let’s win the war good and proper this time, so all the boys can go home. In Christ’s name, Amen.”

  He did not think it much of a prayer, but then he had never been much good at extempore praying even in Chinese. After waiting awhile for the Dutchman to finish it occurred to him that he hadn’t yet touched on his own personal affairs, so he did so now, briefly and simply. Then the Dutchman got to his feet, so the doctor said a quick Amen and followed suit. He felt much better in every possible way, especially when the Dutchman suggested one more nightcap.

  “Ah,” said the doctor, smiling in anticipation, “that’s something I never did turn down…”

  The Dutchman poured out a generous allowance, commenting rather quizzically meanwhile: “I didn’t know you were a religious man, Doctor.”

  “Well, I’m not, in a sort of way, but then I am too, in another sort of way.”

  The padre touched the doctor’s arm gently, as with sudden affection. “Perhaps,” he said, raising his glass, “the other sort of way is better.”

  All night the Janssens pushed through the light, but towards dawn the moon dipped into the sea, and there was a single hour of darkness before the sky unfurled for another day of blue skies and perfect weather.

  But there was now no sight of land, and ten days later the Janssens nosed into the harbor of Fremantle.

  The doctor took the men from the Marblehead ashore to an Australian hospital and spent the usual busy time getting them settled. After filling out countless forms, his only remaining problem was that of those lost receipts for the goods he had bought with the Dutch guilders given him by the Navy. He still had about five hundred guilders left, and during the days that followed he made several attempts to get rid of them. The top Navy official at Fremantle Harbor listened to his explanation of their existence and then pushed them gently aside as if they were in some way contaminated. “I can’t do anything with these, Doctor—you’ll have to hand them in somewhere else.”

  “But it’s Navy money—it doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Well, it doesn’t belong to me either. Why don’t you try the Paymaster’s Office?”

  So the doctor went to the Paymaster’s Office and was there advised to await word from Washington. “Can’t do anything here about it. You see, we wouldn’t know how to put it in the books.”

  The doctor did not think this was a very satisfactory reason, so he trundled his evidently hot money to a third office, where the refusal to accept it was even brusquer. Finally, after worrying about the matter for several days, he had an idea: he would put the bills in an envelope and simply mail them to the Navy Department, Washington, D.C. He reached this decision whilst having a bath, and was just enjoying the sensation of a load lifted from his mind when a message came that the Admiral wanted to see him at once.

  Now the doctor’s feeling for an admiral was similar to that which as a schoolboy he had felt for a headmaster, as a missionary for a bishop, and as a CCC doctor for some high visiting official. That is to say, he respected them all, but because he began by being shy, he ended as often as not by appearing truculent. Anyhow, the shyness carne first, and by the time he had reached the Admiral’s house, attired in a clean khaki suit and actually a necktie, he was very shy indeed. The first thing he did on being ushered into the presence was to plank down those five hundred guilders on the desk with a burst of urgent explanation. The Admiral looked rather puzzled as he listened; then he said: “I really don’t know anything about this, Doctor. It’s not my department, anyhow.” (“But that’s what they all say,” thought the doctor.) “What I asked you to come for is something else altogether…By the way, what’s the matter? You look worried…”

  “Oh no, no, no,” said the doctor.

  “Well, the point is,�
� continued the Admiral quite sternly, “I have to give you a message, and as I’m not much of a talker, I’ll go right at it. You’ve been awarded the Navy Cross…Congratulations.”

  The doctor felt his hand seized and could only stammer: “Wh- what ?”

  “I said you’ve been awarded the Navy Cross. For gallantry in getting your men out of Java. A mighty fine thing to do. You saved their lives—no doubt about it. They say so themselves. They give you all the credit. They say—”

  “Oh, no…no…no…” said the doctor. And suddenly tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t only being praised by an admiral, but to think that the men from the Marblehead thought that much of him…the Marblehead …those boys…

  A few days later the Admiral gave a dinner and after a certain amount of preliminary festivity the doctor loosened up. It had begun by his merely answering questions put by various officers, but soon he found himself telling them about Three Martini, and the British officer who had seemed at first so aloof but had really been a grand fellow, and Dr. Voorhuys, and the Dutch wireless operator at Tjilatjap. “All those fellows helped us—we couldn’t have done anything without them. And Captain Prass, of course. That man sure was a man if ever there was one…And then there were the boys themselves. I won’t say they’re perfect, any of them, but it wouldn’t have been any use me trying to get ‘em out if they hadn’t had the guts to be got out.” He turned more personally to the Admiral. “And finally, sir, there was something I haven’t talked to a soul about till now, but I think I ought to mention it. And that’s prayer. There was a Dutch padre on board the Janssens and every night after that first air attack he and I prayed that those bloody Nips wouldn’t find us again…Excuse my language—it’s what an English soldier called ‘em and it’s kinda stuck in my mind…Yes, sir, we prayed hard, and I don’t really figger anything else could have got us through.”

  The Admiral was at first slightly embarrassed by the turn the doctor’s remarks had taken, for the power of prayer is not a favourite topic among high- ranking Naval officers; but when he looked across the table and saw the face of a man telling very simply what he very simply believed, he felt he must be equally sincere himself.