The Story of Dr. Wassell (11 page)

The British officer’s eyes sought focus and found it momentarily. “Ah
yes—the boy with the smashed elbow. I sent him on ahead with my
evacuation officer. He caught one of your Navy ships last night…”

“You mean Muller’s already out?”

“Rather. Any objection?”

“Good God, no—I’ll say he’s lucky—”

“I’d say he’s damned lucky.”

“And what about the other boy—Renny?”

“We dropped him off at a first-aid station.”

“You dropped him off? But don’t you know we’re getting out of here
tonight—in a few hours! I don’t want to leave any of my boys behind.
And you promised—”

The eyes of the British officer stared away into space. “He was very ill.
He said he couldn’t stand any more. We stopped at the first-aid station to
see what they could do for him, and he begged us to leave him there. We left
one of our own men too—crashed into a bridge on his motorcycle and
broke both legs. There was a nurse—Javanese—who stayed with your
man. She told me she’d given him her blood and felt she must look after him
whatever happened—at least that’s what I
thought
she
said—I don’t speak Javanese well. And there wasn’t time to argue…You
see, I had to use my own judgment—right or wrong, one often has to use
one’s own judgment.”

All at once the officer’s face rolled sideways and his body slipped
forward across the table. The doctor was just in time to save him from
falling to the floor, and the effort of doing so killed his indignation as
effectively as it served to waken the other man from the sudden stab of
sleep.

“Awfully sorry,” he mumbled, forcing his eyes open. “Three days and two
nights since we left Surabaya—on the road all the time—sort of a
tiring trip…What was I saying? Oh yes, about your man…I tell you frankly,
he looked pretty ghastly. I was afraid he’d die. I wouldn’t have liked
that.”

“I understand,” said the doctor quietly.

“But I’ll tell you what I’ll do…I’ll keep in touch with him and if any
of us get out, we’ll take him with us.”

“You will?” said the doctor, putting out his hand.

“Oh, rather.” The British officer shook hands with extreme embarrassment.
“And…er…I’d better give you my name.”

He did so, and received the doctor’s, after which the latter said gently:
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

“Not half a bad idea,” replied the other, slumping forward across the
table instantly.

The seven men from the
Marblehead
went aboard the
Janssens
at dusk. They had rested for a while until all arrangements had been made by
the doctor, assisted by the Dutch wireless man. The latter had commandeered
from somewhere or other a school bus, and into this vehicle the less wounded
men piled with their luggage and were driven through the still heavy rain to
the dock. The three worse wounded traveled in the doctor’s car.

But the Dutchman had done something else: he had procured, also from
somewhere or other, some pretty good mattresses, which he presented to the
doctor for the use of the men during the sea trip. And it was both reassuring
and not so reassuring when he said, handing them over: “These mattresses are
made of kapok, so they’ll float in water if you just hang onto them.”

The doctor did not quite know how to thank him for the mattresses, so he
gave him the Ford sedan. “But what shall I do with it,” asked the Dutchman,
“when the Japs come?”

“There’s a can of gas in the back. Pour it over the seat and throw a match
inside, and then get the hell out of the way. Matter of fact, I don’t see why
you should wait here till the Japs come. Why don’t you leave with us right
now? We could use you.”

The other answered: “Thank you, it is very kind of you, but I must stay at
my duty. You understand, it is a duty I have here.”

The doctor gripped his hand and said he understood.

British boys from the convoy also did things. They were setting up anti-
aircraft guns on the pier when the doctor signaled them. “Hey, give me a
hand, will you—I can’t do all this myself…”

They hadn’t realized what exactly he was trying to do until then. In the
heavy rain, and with the crowds on the dock, and with the litter of guns and
ammunition all around them, it wasn’t easy to see what anyone was doing. When
they discovered that one man was actually trying to carry six wounded men
from a bus to a launch, they left their guns as if (for the moment) even guns
were less important. While Javanese took care of the luggage, these British
soldiers carried the men piggyback to the launch; and later, when the launch
reached the
Janssens
, Dutch sailors grabbed them one by one and
carried them on deck by the same method.

So the doctor and the seven men at last got on the
Janssens
and the
doctor found a place for the mattresses on the stern deck, under an awning
through which the rain only dripped a little. Every inch of the decks was
occupied; many of the sprawled bodies were already drenched through, but
nobody minded the rain, and while the doctor was fixing the men warmly and
comfortably he just hoped it would go on raining all night.

The
Janssens
, packed like a ferryboat after a holiday, waited till
dark to nose out into the channel and zigzag through the minefields, and when
at last it leaned to the touch of the first sea rollers the doctor leaned
with it in a great sigh of content. Then he remembered something he had
promised himself during the road journey with the convoy. So he pushed his
way through to the bar and was soon in conversation with a newspaper
correspondent who had been in Singapore and Batavia and knew so much about
what was happening all over the world that the doctor, when eventually asked
where
he
had been during recent weeks, replied humbly: “Oh, just back
and forth between Tjilatjap and a place inland. I guess I’m just one of those
sure slow Arkansas travelers.”

The correspondent, however, proved an interesting companion and the doctor
would have enjoyed his conversation thoroughly but for a realization that
came to him when he fished in his pocket for the long cigarette holder. “It’s
in my briefcase,” he reminded himself. “I put it there for safety…” Then he
added aloud: “But, by golly, I must have left my briefcase some
place—either on that dock or at the hotel…”

“Oh, that’s nothing. I left a cigarette case that Chiang Kai-shek gave me
in a cocktail bar in Calcutta, and my Leica was stolen in Kuala Lumpur, and a
fool of a porter dropped my typewriter into the sea crossing to
Sumatra…”

“But there were papers in it as well as my cigarette holder,” said the
doctor, uncomforted. “Important papers…”

The correspondent laughed. “Take it from me, Doctor, no papers are
important these days—not even newspapers.”

The doctor did not feel he could tell a stranger (and a non-Navy man) what
his lost papers were, but later that evening, when he made his good-night
check on the condition of the men, he confided in Wilson. “I’ve lost all
those receipts,” he blurted out. “You know the Navy people gave me a thousand
guilders altogether, and I’ve spent about half of it, but I can’t remember
the items exactly—not without the receipts and the notes I made at the
time…You’ll have to back me up, Wilson, when they come onto me about it,
and they sure will—they’re all the same—whether it’s a school
board or a missionary society or the CCC or even the Navy—you’ve got to
show papers for everything…”

“All right, I’ll back you up. Did you find a drink on this ocean
greyhound?”

“Sure I did, and I’d have brought something for you and the others only it
wouldn’t mix with the shots I’ve just pumped into you.”

Wilson smiled’ again. “That’s all right, Doc. Only I’m glad you got a
drink. You deserved it, after all you did today—and yesterday…In fact
I hope you got several drinks.”

The doctor seemed pleased at the tribute. “Well,” he answered at length,
“there wasn’t
much
to drink—I mean there wasn’t Scotch or
anything. But I did punish the beer whenever I caught it wandering by…”

All night the
M.S. Janssens
sailed into the rainy sea. She was a
small ship, but good enough of her kind and for her normal class of business,
which was interisland travel—rarely out of sight of land or more than
overnight from one port to the next. She was even fairly luxurious, with her
spick-and-span white-painted cabins, and the teak-paneled smoke room and the
picture of Queen Wilhelmina in the lounge which faced (somewhat rebukingly,
one could imagine) that of a bare-breasted bronze beauty whose charms in
happier days might have tempted the traveler to include Bali in his tour.

But now the Laps had included Bali, and for them there was a small gun on
the bow and another on the stern, besides thirty-caliber machine guns on each
side of a concrete-protected bridge.

And there were other abnormalities due to recent events. Two hundred
passengers the
Janssens
had often carried with peacetime speed and
comfort; but now she had more than thrice that number and her Diesel engine,
designed for eleven knots, made seven and a half at best. She was high in the
water because, despite her excess passenger list, she had none of her usual
heavy cargo of tea and rubber and automobiles—only cases of ammunition
and (if one were pessimistic) far too few of them.

Far too few were the lifeboats and rafts also, and the shoulder straps of
the cork life jackets had been a little rotted with salt-water spray during
all the pleasant years in which they had never been used. One tried not to
think of these things, and many other things aboard the
Janssens
tempted one not to, for a stale whiff of civilization clung to her like a
hangover. There was still crested notepaper in the drawers of the lounge
writing tables, and still the framed notice over all the cabin washbasins
imploring the traveler (in Dutch and English) not to cut towels by wiping
razor blades on them.

Towards midnight, when the
Janssens
had been six hours at sea, the
doctor slept a little in a chair in the lounge, but about two o’clock he was
on deck again—for fresh air, he told himself, but really see how his
men were. He passed them quietly in review—they were all asleep, some
of them snoring against the tattoo of the rain on the awning above. He would
have enjoyed a smoke there in the darkness, but he knew he dared not strike a
match, and he was fumbling his way back to the lounge when he heard the voice
of the terrible Captain Prass at his elbow.

“So…Doctor…you got on board all right?”

“Yes, and I’d like to say again—even if I was in too much of a hurry
to say it before—that I’m mighty obliged to you, sir.”

Captain Prass ignored that. “Please to come with me to my cabin.”

“Certainly.”

They walked together along the crowded darkened decks, Prass taking the
doctor’s arm in a grip that was controlling rather than intimate. The doctor
felt that, and was even a little nervous when he found himself in the
Captain’s cabin with the door closed and the lights suddenly switched on. He
noted that everything was spotlessly clean and perfectly in order. The
Captain was taking a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer. “Please to write
your name and those of your men here.”

“Oh, I see—a passenger list?” The doctor smiled as he took the
proffered fountain pen.

“I have never sailed without one,” replied the Captain, as if stating a
fact that settled the matter. He added, while the doctor began to write: “To
me it is correct that a captain should have the names of all who are on board
his ship.”

The doctor thought of the thronged decks and wondered if anyone else were
at that moment worrying about what was correct. But he liked the quality in
the Captain—it gave a certain confidence, and while he went on writing
he could not avoid noticing that the list was already a long one.

The Captain continued: “I hope your men are comfortable. I warned you, of
course, that we had only deck space.”

“Oh yes, I understand that.”

“Many passengers, however, on learning that wounded American sailors were
on board, have wanted to give up their cabins.”

“Well, sir, I sure do appreciate it, but the fact is, it’s kind of warm
weather and the boys are pretty well suited where they are. Those bunks would
be twisty to get in and out of…”

The Captain grunted his agreement, then added; “And there is another
thing. Where they are is nearer the lifeboats.”

“That certainly is a point,” answered the doctor, with an air of
casualness, “especially if there’s a sub on our tail.”

“There are several,” answered the Captain grimly.

The doctor slept again, while the
Janssens
pushed through the rain
and water, each mile, one hoped, increasing her chance of being alone in an
empty sea when dawn carne. Then just before dawn the rain stopped, and just
after it the clouds overhead broke into a patch of eggshell blue. Mist still
fringed all the horizons, but presently, as the sun rose, those passengers
who were staring northward from the
Janssens
saw something that
shocked them unutterably.
It was the land
.

The land was quite close, not more than a couple of miles away—long,
low, jungle-skirted beaches, estuaries with sandbars gleaming through the
haze. It could be nothing else but the coast of Java, so that all night long,
while they had thought the
Janssens
was taking them out to sea and
safety, they must have been hugging the shore. The doctor was among the first
to see it; he was as disappointed as anyone else, and beyond that,
apprehensive. Somehow to get far away from the enemy’s conquest seemed an
obvious first principle; and yet—it was an odd thing—the doctor
had faith in Captain Prass. Was it possible that, by doing what was
not
so obvious, the Captain had outwitted the submarines?