Free The Story of Dr. Wassell by James Hilton Page B

fate.
    All the men were ready.
    He looked at them for a moment, unable to speak; then he made the thumbs-
up sign and said: “Good for you, boys. Let’s get going.”
* * * * *
    So the nine men from the Marblehead went down to
Tjilatjap a second
time.
    There had been second farewells at the hospital, but with a new and wilder
note in them—the nurses kissed and embraced the men with a half-
preoccupied air, for they were already constrained to think of other things,
of what would happen to them and to their friends and families later. The men
were derisive in an American way that the Dutch and Javanese could not
properly understand—how could anyone joke at such a moment? But
some of the men kept kidding about the whole situation. “Don’t worry,
nurse—we’ll be back to-morrow. Have a nice meal ready for us, won’t
you?…The doe’s just taking us for another day at the beach, that’s
all…”
    The doctor heard but did not object to these remarks. They seemed to him
as helpful as anything else that could have been said.
    The nine men from the Marblehead sorted themselves out (under the
doctor’s supervision) into worse and better cases. The latter rode in a
truck, lying down as best they could on the flat boards. The former climbed
into the Ford car whose springs and cushions were kinder to their wounds;
there were Sun, whose legs were not yet much recovered, and Francini, who had
to sit upright. The doctor fixed Sun so that his legs stretched comfortably,
over the back of the front seat. Wilson, whose wounds enabled him to sit and
almost now to stand, took the seat next to the doctor.
    Muller, with the shattered leg, was given a lift in the British captain’s
car.
    The doctor would not start until the entire convoy had passed, so that he
knew for certain that his men had not been left behind. This entailed a
considerable wait, for there were some two hundred trucks, containing ack-ack
guns, field kitchens, traveling repair shops—the whole outfit of a
modern mechanized force.
    The journey began before the sun was high, and continued slowly but
without a pause until well into the afternoon. The doctor did not at first
regret the slow pace, for it was years since he had driven a car before, and
both the gear shift and the “keep-to-the-left” rule were new to him. It took
him several hours to get really used to these novelties and relax a little.
Wilson, in pain but not complaining, slept for long stretches. Sun was so
quiet that it was hard to tell whether he were even in pain or not. Francini
sat carefully upright, trying to minimize the jolts of the roadway by flexing
his muscles in advance. The doctor tried as far as he could to avoid such
jolts, but sometimes it was impossible and then he would half turn round and
say “Sorry” to the boy behind. Somehow he knew there was no point in saying,
“Sorry,” since the boy knew he couldn’t help it, but he still went on saying
it.
    Towards noon he began to feel sleepy, but fortunately a British
motorcyclist, red-faced and incredibly cheerful, rode alongside to shout a
warning of possible air attack. The whole convoy was to be spaced out to
minimize the risk of bomb hits, and everyone must be prepared to jump out at
a moment’s notice and take shelter in the roadside ditches. The cyclist rode
off in a cloud of dust, having delivered this message, leaving the doctor to
wonder how Sun and Nilson and Francini could perform such acrobatic feats in
any conceivable emergency. But there was nothing for it but just to drive on
and hope for the best. At any rate, the incident had served to wake him
up.
    But not some other drivers, apparently, for at several places he noticed
trucks burning at the roadside, either from driving mishaps or because they
had broken down irreparably and had been deliberately fired.
    He had to concentrate on his own driving for another reason: the Dutch
officer who was leading the way began