The Story of Dr. Wassell

by James Hilton

  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?

  The doctor outlined this optimistic theory when he paid his first visit to the men. They had slept well and were feeling better. Wraiths of steam rose from the drenched awning over them as the sun dried it; the air was warm and salt-fresh, while the Janssens jostled its way due east as if there were nothing on earth or in the sky or beneath the waves to cause a second’s fear. But for that sight of the land everyone would have been in a cheerful mood and everyone almost was, when they heard the doctor’s theory. The men from the Marblehead agreed that the Captain might have done a smart thing. But they also thought that the Captain might not have counted on such a fine day. “The haze is lifting already,” Hanrahan said. And McGuffey added: “In fact we’re gonna have the Goddamnedest perfect weather you ever saw…”

  Others joined in the argument, chance passers-by walking the decks because they had slept enough, or because they had not slept at all; Dutch, Australian, American. British. Javanese—all had something to say or prophesy about the weather, and all—with their eyes on the shore—cursed the splendor of the day that was beginning.

  The doctor looked after the men and brought them breakfast as soon as it was served. Considering the crowd and the nervous tension, the food was not bad and seemed ample—or perhaps it was that many people had small appetites. The men from the Marblehead , however, ate substantially, and afterwards the doctor brought each of them a bottle of beer.

  Several who could walk then took a turn along the deck to stretch their legs, but there was no pleasure in it, because of the press of people sprawled around on almost every inch of space; and after a few minutes of such intricate navigation the men returned gratefully to their mattresses. Wilson, however, chose this morning to decide that he was well enough to begin standing on his legs, and the doctor was torn between genuine pleasure at such evidence of recovery and a feeling that he might, perhaps, have deferred the decision until later. Anyhow, he helped Wilson to a chair in the smoke room, where they found the newspaper correspondent arguing politics. The doctor introduced them and slipped out again into the morning air.

  He climbed to the top deck and for the first time in weeks felt he had both time and room to breathe. It was curious—this sudden desire to be alone, if only for a moment, to take quiet stock of things and events. He lit a cigarette (no holder now), and leaned over the rail, watching the wake of the Janssens as it grooved through the milky sea. Not a cloud now hung in the sky anywhere, and the shoreline seemed no more than swimming distance away. It was hard to think that this was not a pleasure trip; and yet, in another sense, it was hard to think that there could be any pleasure left in the world. The two ideas mingled in his mind and produced a certain confusion; it was easier, really, to be either an optimist or a pessimist, and not an odd mixture of both. When the doctor gazed over the clear sea and thought how simply a submarine could spot and overtake the Janssens from miles away, he was a pessimist; but when he felt the warmth on his face and the whiff of spray and flower scents on the landward breeze, he could not help feeling that the world was very beautiful and that life was worth living in it, if only for a perilous hour on a sunny morning.

  There were some odd people on board. There was a tall, wild-faced man, a Dutch civilian, who kept dashing from side to side of the foredeck with a long telescope, peering through it and then handing it to the nearest stranger for confirmation of something seen or imagined.

  There was a Dutch youth, not more than eighteen, studying to be an officer in the Dutch Navy; he sat quietly in a corner of the deck working out trigonometrical problems in an exercise book. The doctor had a few words with him and found that Captain Prass had set him these problems a
s part of the boy’s regular navigation course. The boy had no fear of anything save of not passing his routine examinations, and his only urgent question about the war was whether there would still be a Dutch Navy and whether he could still become an officer in it. The doctor thought he could answer these questions very definitely, and he did so. “And I’ll tell you why, my lad. Because there’s still an American Navy.” The boy then put a question about Annapolis, whereupon the doctor replied: “Don’t ask me that, I wasn’t there—there’s no high cockalorum and sanctum sanctorum about me. Not that I’ve anything against Annapolis men, mind you—Wilson’s one…only what I mean is, I’m not in that bunch myself.”

  The boy smiled without wholly understanding the answer; then he went back to his problem.

  It was odd (the doctor thought as he sunned himself back and forth under the open sky) how differently people behaved at a time like this. There were some who wore their life preservers all the while, others who merely used them as a pillow for sleep, some who carelessly left them lying about and forgot them altogether. (The doctor himself belonged to the second category.) just as there were some who ate heartily, others who had no appetite at all, many who just wanted to drink whenever drinks could be obtained. And some grumbled and were querulous, others talked with loud boastfulness, a few shrank solitary into corners with a secret terror at heart.

  And there were a few also, like the Dutch student, who behaved as they probably would have done in far different circumstances.

  Like McGuffey too, the doctor realized, a moment later; for he suddenly came upon him talking very fondly and intimately to a girl.

  She was a very charming girl, with a clear gentle face and intelligent eyes; and from her first words it was obvious she was American and nearly as obvious that she came from the Middle West. McGuffey made the introduction, and the doctor (who had an eye for a pretty girl himself) chatted and joked with them for a little while. Somehow the idea of McGuffey attaching himself to such a gentle creature made the doctor feel that he ought to give her at least a half-caution. “Well. McGuffey,” he said jocularly, “I can see you’re in good hands at last.” And to the girl he added, in the same mood: “But don’t believe all he says—he’s a bad boy, you know.”

  The girl answered, slowly at first: “I was the last woman out of Sumatra. I walked for two hundred miles through the jungle and I was nearly killed by wild elephants and I got ill of something I ate and I nearly died. But I kept on till I got to the coast and then I persuaded a native boy to take me in a small boat. The Japs fired at us and sank the boat, but I managed to swim ashore on Java. Six weeks the whole journey took, and all kinds of people helped me, Dutch, English, native—but somehow I didn’t meet any Americans till I came aboard last night. And then—believe me—I felt I could love the worst American sailor in the world.”

  The doctor chuckled, partly to hide his emotion. “Well, there you are, McGuffey, that sounds to me like a mighty fine proposition.”

  The girl’s face suddenly blushed over. “I guess I really don’t know what I’m saying…I’m a missionary.”

  “So was I too,” answered the doctor comfortingly. “And mighty fine folks they are. I’ve nothing against missionaries—it’s a wonderful job and though lots of people sneer at them for one thing or another, the good they really do is more than anyone would believe who hasn’t been in China and places to see it.” He ended up, a little breathlessly: “I take off my hat to missionaries, and if any young man I knew felt he had a call that way I’d say—‘On top to you, my lad, you join ‘em—they’re the cream of the earth!’”

  At that moment a sudden scurry of movement drew their attention to the deck below where Dutch sailors were maiming the two-inch gull and pointing it southward over the sea.

  There were submarines. Everyone knew it now. It wasn’t merely scuttle- butt talk (as the men from the Marblehead called rumors), but plain truth proved by the extra vigilance of gun crews and the Captain peering from the bridge. At any moment the sea might break to show something, a periscope stalking the sea a mile away, the long steel creature itself near at hand. Only a minority aboard the Janssens had ever seen a submarine, vet all knew they would give it an awful moment of recognition, and for this moment they waited, half hypnotized by the waiting. That they would be sunk by a torpedo now became a certainty in their minds, something not to be denied or even questioned; all that remained discussible were things that might happen afterwards. The doctor, as he left McGuffey and the girl, heard people saying that the Captain was keeping inshore to give the passengers a chance of swimming to land, or at any rate of clinging to rafts and debris until rescue came. And for this reason people began to stare shorewards, noting a smooth beach here, a group of houses at a river mouth, a fringe of surf denoting rocks or crosscurrents. It was almost sometimes as if one would rather stop the Janssens opposite a good place and wait for the submarine to arrive and perform its predestined duty. But Captain Prass evidently had no such qualms, for he kept the ship steadily eastward in its tracks, passing good and bad places alike. Meanwhile the sailors stayed at the guns, moving them around in wide arcs to test the swivel mechanism; and the man with the telescope dashed from one side to another as if mere frenzy would help.

  The doctor passed the Dutch boy still busy over his trigonometry problems, and something in the calmness of such an occupation made him say: “Come along with me if you like—I’ll take you to a man who can answer anything you ask him about Annapolis.”

  The Dutch boy closed his exercise book and tagged along gratefully down the stairway to the lower deck, where the doctor led him to the smoke room and presented him to Wilson. Wilson was enjoying a bottle of beer, and had kept another one for the doctor. The newspaper correspondent vas some way of, still arguing politics, so Wilson and the boy plunged immediately into conversation while the doctor poured out his drink.

  Presently the doctor remarked, as if answering a question important enough not to have been asked: It’s a calm sea, and those mattresses float. And when everyone’s looking for trouble that’s just when it doesn’t come…always.”

  “The Captain thinks it will this time. He was down here just now—about the cork jackets.”

  “I see you’re not wearing yours.”

  Wilson grunted: “I’ve got it by me, but I don’t like the damned things till I have to put ‘em on. They smell. Or maybe I smell. I guess we all could do with a bath.” He sniffed the air of the smoke room in an analyzing way. “Thank God for tobacco.”

  The doctor smiled. “Nervousness makes some folks like that. Adrenalin in the blood. Not that I blame anybody.” (The doctor never blamed anybody.) “I’m a bit nervy myself, come to that.”

  “Well. I am too, but this kid here isn’t. That’s a funny thing, Doc—the way he can concentrate on asking me questions about Annapolis and I don’t sort of seem able to concentrate properly on the answers.”

  “You might as well. You might as well try to think of something .”

  Wilson laughed. “Well, what are you trying to think of?”

  “Oh boy—that’s easy. The dinner I’ll have when I get back home—some skinned catfish and a couple of squirrels. Or maybe a steak as big as a guitar and three inches thick.” The doctor had not really been trying to think of all this, but they were the first things that came to him when he was challenged for an answer.

  “You don’t really eat squirrels in Arkansas?”

  “Sure we do—and they taste mighty good if they’re cooked right.”

  A change in the constant rhythm of the Janssens’s Diesel engine communicated itself, a change hardly to be noticed, yet somehow sinister merely because it was a change. Most of the occupants of the smoke room suddenly stopped talking, listened a moment, then went on as if ashamed of themselves for the delay. The doctor paused also, and added: “Sure, there’s a lot of whoopedoo about what you eat—eat what you like if it’s good for you, that’s what I’ve always said…”

  “
We seem to be changing course,” Wilson murmured.

  The doctor watched a bar of sunlight gliding across the floor. “I guess we are. Maybe the coast turns here. Wish we had a map.”

  “Cully has a map.” (Cully was the newspaper correspondent.) “But it’s just a page of an atlas that goes all the way down from Shanghai to New Zealand. Not much use…There’s one thing, though—we’ll probably get five or ten minutes’ warning. They generally give you that.”

  “I’d better go up and see the boys,” said the doctor.

  “Sure, finish your drink—then I’ll go with you. There’ll be time, whatever happens…”

  But there was no time. The danger was on the Janssens in a matter of seconds. And it came, not from the sea, but from the sky.

  Jap bombers were roaring in dozens from Bali to Tjilatjap, their racks full-loaded—flying fast and direct and at a great height. Halfway their leader saw the little Janssens plodding below; he gave a signal, whereupon three of his fighter escort of Zeros detached themselves in a sudden zoom to the south.

  This happened while Wilson and the Dutch boy were talking about Annapolis, while the doctor was opening his bottle of beer, while Cully was theorizing about Rudolf Hess, while McGuffey was flirting with a missionary, while Captain Prass was scanning the sea for submarines and not even thinking of other danger. But that danger came—at three hundred miles an hour, throttles open for the dive, cannons at the ready.

  No one in the crowded smoke room of Janssens knew what was happening until a few until a few seconds after they heard the roar. It was something which, with their fears concentrated on submarines, made them think first of some strange new undersea weapon preparing to strike; and during those few seconds the mind refused perception that the roar came from above and that the sound of it was recognizable. Then somebody shouted “Planes,” and at the same instant the roar expanded into successive explosions as bullets tore through the wooden superstructure.