The Story of Dr. Wassell (12 page)

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 as 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.