The Story of Dr. Wassell

by James Hilton

  Everyone dropped to the floor, a few by instinct, some because they really thought it safe, most because they saw others do it. And there was no room on the floor for a roomful of people who had been jammed enough when sitting or standing, so that bodies soon piled on top of bodies, and the lower ones did not object—it seemed to them all the greater protection. Meanwhile the ship swerved sharply, its decks sloping so that bottles and magazines fell off the table tops over the heaped bodies. The picture of the Balinese girl crashed from the wall onto a fat Dutchman who thereafter held its ruined canvas over him like a shield.

  The doctor and Wilson were on the floor, half under a table, and because they had been finishing a drink when the roar began they were still holding their half-filled glasses. For some reason that neither of them was afterwards able to explain exactly, they finished their drinks during the first cannonade. It was certainly not bravery, much less bravado; more likely it was because they did not know what else to do with half-glasses of beer in their hands. Anyhow, they finished them off, the liquid spilling a little when the floor began to slope.

  The whole incident, from the beginning of the roar to the end of the drinks, could not have lasted more than twenty seconds; there was no time to be heroic, certainly nothing to be heroic about. The chance of being hit was neither much greater nor much less whatever one did; lying down might reduce the target area for one bullet, or increase it for another—it depended on angles unforeseeable and incalculable. And neither tables nor human bodies were any protection if the bullet struck. In this sense (but nobody of course thought or argued about it till afterwards) everything the occupants of the smoke room did was meaningless, ineffective, a mere reshuffling of cards in a game whose rules were unknown.

  But the individual will to survive ignored all this, and once the firing stopped there was reason enough to do so; for it then occurred to everyone simultaneously that whereas the roof was of wood, the floor was of steel, and that to get below it, onto the lower deck, was logical, obvious, and imperative. The doctor had another overwhelming urge: he wanted to reach his men. He did not know what had happened to them, or what he could do for them; but he wanted to be with them with the same primitive instinct that had made him drop to the floor.

  All the crowd in the smoke room were now pressing into the companionway towards the lower saloon, and the doctor and Wilson could not get further than halfway down the stairway when the roar began again. The steel deck began its overhead protection about six feet in front of the doctor, and try as he could there was no means of jamming humanity more solidly forward than it was. And lie could not move back either, because pressure was increasing from the rear. He could see, from where he stood, the terrible blue unsheltered sky, and when he saw that, he felt as if giant fists were opening and closing inside his stomach.

  The roaring increased; few people spoke or made any sound except a heavy strained breathing that could be felt rather than heard. A child whimpered somewhere, clear and shrill over the din. And one incident happened quite close that might have been funny if one had had time (then) to see the joke. Cully, the newspaperman, was jammed up close behind a prim middle-aged woman who suddenly swung round and shouted “Don’t push me!” as indignantly as if she had been in a theatre queue. Cully laughed and shouted back: “I wasn’t pushing you, lady, I was just trying to lace up your life jacket…”

  The roaring expanded again into the shatter of bullet explosions.

  The three Jap Zero fighters were raking the Janssens from stem to stern, swooping up when they had finished each dive and circling over to come again. A dozen Dutch sailors manning the guns fore and aft were trying to blast a series of targets moving towards them at three hundred miles an hour. These Dutchmen were brave, disciplined, and intelligent, but most of them had never faced this sort of enemy before. They were too eager, too excited, their hate boiled too high in the blood—too high, anyhow, for the split-second technique of modern warfare. They fired too soon.

  Crowded in their cockpits the Japs were doing the things they had practised for years. Their planes were not especially made for ship sinkings, merely for casual terrorism and murder, with perhaps an outside chance of setting a ship on fire; they carried no bombs and must not take too much time over a small impromptu attack of no particular importance—a mere sideshow, as it were, in the business of the day. Aware of this, yet with routine efficiency, the men pressed buttons to deal out a smattering of death to the crowded decks below.

  The diving and raking went on, and the gunners would soon have learned the trick of holding fire until the enemy was almost overhead and then blasting him in a short sharp burst of concentrated attack—they would soon have learned this if there had been time. But there was no time, and presently there was no more ammunition. Then the planes dived again and again upon the defenseless ship, till at a signal they suddenly turned off and flew back over the land.

  Throughout all this (only a matter of a few minutes in all) Captain Prass had stayed on the bridge, his eyes measuring the track of each dive as against the S-curves his hands could impart to the ship. When the planes flew away he tilted his blue beret over his forehead and set the ship again on her straight eastward course.

  No one had been killed outright aboard the Janssens nor had any serious damage been done to the structure of the ship. It seemed almost a miracle that only ten human bodies out of over six hundred had been struck by bullets. Most of these ten had been among the gun crews.

  Not till the all-clear whistle sounded was the doctor able to push through to the men from the Marblehead . He found them all safe. Those who could move had somehow dragged the others on their mattresses under the shelter of a projecting upper deck; the awning above the place they had left was torn to shreds. The men were as glad to see the doctor as he was to see them; then suddenly somebody exclaimed: “Where’s McGuffey?”

  The doctor, knowing where McGuffey had been half an hour before, hurried to the upper deck. It was there, and amongst the gun crews fore and aft, where the casualties had been. One man, riddled with bullets through the stomach and legs, had been watching the attack as if it were a sporting event. A boy of fourteen, hopping around on one leg as the blood ran out of his other shoe, had been shot painfully but not seriously through the instep.

  The doctor went far enough to see that McGuffey and his girl companion were, unhurt; then he hurried back to the boy with the smashed foot. He knew he had work to do.

  The wounded were carried into the bar, because that was where, for some reason, the first-aid cabinet was situated; and it was found convenient to lay them on the bar counter for treatment. It was odd, too, how apt the bar equipment was for improvised medical uses—water, glasses, swabs, towels, to hand; even the rail that stopped drinks from sliding off in rough weather proved equally useful in holding a human body.

  The doctor had not practised serious surgery y for years; but in first- aid emergency stuff he was as good as many a thousand-dollar operator, and perhaps better than some; he had a sound knowledge of the human body and its reactions to pain and shock, plus an ingrained reluctance to do more with the knife than he felt absolutely necessary. (He had already, he hoped, saved Edmunds’s leg and Muller’s arm by communicating that reluctance to a perhaps bolder surgeon.) In any case, there were no facilities on board the Janssens for final treatment of wounds; all anyone could do was to give the sufferers shots of morphine, splint smashed limbs, swab and stanch and bandage, and prevent some well-intentioned helper from flooding a hole in a man’s stomach with iodine. It was an hour’s hard and rather horrible work, and while he performed it, a little audience gathered which included passengers, crew members, some of his own men from the Marblehead , and one Dutch pharmacist’s mate who gave him useful help.

  He did not talk much during this hour, except to ask for things and to give encouragement to each new patient when laid on the bar counter. For instance, as he gave a shot to the whimpering boy with the smashed foot he said, smili
ng: “Hey, sonny, you just got a rabbit in you if you’re afraid of this little needle…”

  And when someone said that a man’s wound in the lower part of the back didn’t look serious, he answered sharply: “It’s always serious, when a man’s hit in the—” He was about to finish the sentence when he saw that a few women were within hearing, so he amended hastily: “What I mean is, a bullet can go in here right through to the guts and make one hell of a mess—”

  When his task was over the doctor washed his hands and face, but it was impossible to do much to improve the look of his clothes, and he had no other clothes. They were streaked with grime and grease and blood, and damp through with sweat. It took him some moments to realize, after he left the bar, that no one shared his sense of relief, and soon he knew why and had to admit that there was nothing to be really relieved about. For of course the attackers would come again. They would return to their headquarters, report the position of the Janssens chugging along at its steady seven and a half knots, and come back or send others to have another try. The flaps were like that.

  Everybody on board the Janssens knew that there had been no reprieve, only a postponement of sentence. Captain Prass knew it; the men from the Marblehead knew it, and one of them said to the doctor: “Well, Doc, looks like as if it wasn’t such a smart thing to get on this ship after all.”

  The doctor replied: “Don’t you aim to be smart—you leave that to me. And any of you that want anything from the kitchen, just holler out and I’ll get it for you, and what’s more, I’ll race everybody that don’t eat with a dipper.”

  So the doctor fetched food to his men and ate with them, but he soon found he had very little appetite. Apprehension that the planes would come again was already dripping into his veins like ice water.

  Meanwhile (and unknown to him because most of it was in the Dutch language) important discussions were being held between some of the passengers and Captain Prass. It was being demanded that, in view of the extreme probability of further attack by air, the Janssens should put ashore and allow those to leave the ship who preferred to take their chances on land. Captain Prass heard out this suggestion grimly and without comment; heard grimly also the prophecy that several of the wounded would die if they were not put ashore to receive hospital attention.

  Captain Prass said he would consider the matter and make his decision within half an hour. Then he went down to the deck where the men from the Marblehead lay. As he had expected, the doctor was there with them.

  “Well, Doctor,” said Captain Prass, his bloodshot eyes staring the man up and down. He did not quite know how to broach the subject, so he said, with a slant of the mouth hardly to be called a smile: “You’ll have to send your suit to be cleaned.”

  “Sure I will, and I could do with a bit of delousing myself.”

  The slant of the Captain’s mouth broadened. “I am obliged to you for your help recently.”

  “Oh, that was only a patch-up job—they’ll need more than that when they can get it.”

  “Tell me, how many do you think will recover?”

  The doctor pondered a moment, then answered: “Most of them ought to—barring complications. One won’t, I guess—he’s belly-shot through and through. And there’s a few doubtfuls—if they were in a hospital, I’d say yes—but of course—”

  “Thank you. I understand.”

  Captain Prass went away, and presently the doctor lit a cigarette while he contemplated his own peculiar problems and anxieties. He was awakened from them by a ship’s officer scurrying about the decks with the announcement that the Captain wished to see all the passengers (those who felt well enough, anyhow) in the smoke room immediately. So there the doctor went, drifting in with the quick-gathering crowd whose tension was mounting as conjectures spread as to the reason for such a summons. The litter left by the bombing attack was a grim reminder to them all, the more so as they could now examine it in greater detail. The doctor noticed that at one spot there was blood on the floor; he had not known till then that anyone in the smoke room had been hit. Some of the paneling was shredded with bullet holes, and on the steel deck underfoot bullets had made circular dents the size of a silver dollar. Some of these dents were in the stanchions reaching up to the ceiling. He could not take his eyes off those dents; he could not help thinking of the fateful collision of flesh and steel, of the softest and hardest things on earth.

  All at once Captain Prass burst into the room, mounted the small platform, and began in a sort of staccato bark: “‘We have decided to put in at a place near here and send the badly wounded ashore. Anyone else who wishes to leave the Janssens may also take that opportunity to do so. You have all time to think it over—ample time—say, half an hour.”

  He was already striding away when someone called out: “May I ask a question, Captain?”

  Captain Prass half-turned. “Certainly, but you already know all the facts that are known to me.”

  “Do you think we shall be attacked again?”

  It was the question on everyone’s mind. Captain Prass might even have been thinking about it himself. “Yes, yes, why not?” he snorted, passing through the doorway.

  The doctor went to his men and told them very simply what the Captain had said, and how the issue had to be decided one way or another immediately. For once, McGuffey did not have to be searched for; he was there with the others, a little scared after his experience on the top deck. Wilson was there also, smoking and leaning weakly against the gunwale; he could walk around a little now, but only a few paces without tiring. The doctor stated the facts, then went on: “Now I don’t feel it’s a matter I ought to decide for you, but I’ll tell you this much—whatever you decide, I’ll stick with you. If you say you’d rather go ashore and take that sort of chance, then right, I’ll tag along. Or if you want to take a chance of being bombed or torpedoed, then that’s okay with me too.” He looked round at them all, hoping they would approve his attitude. “So that’s how it is, boys—it’s all up to you, and make up your minds quick.”

  He walked away, noting as he did so the air of tension that had risen to an almost intolerable pitch on board the Janssens . Passengers and crewmen alike, as he glanced at them, seemed dreadfully preoccupied, either with unspoken thoughts or with whispered arguments between one another. And at the same time he noticed that the Janssens was making a wide turn towards a little inlet in the shore. He did not like the look of that inlet. It was shallow and unprotected, and there was nothing beyond the beach but a few houses and low jungle-covered hills. The Janssens would have to tic up at a ramshackle wooden pier, and he could not imagine any easier target for either casual or planned attack.

  He went back to the men, with a good deal of the prevalent tension working inside himself, though he hoped he did not show it. He tried to bluff it away on a nice cheery note. “Well, boys, what’s it to be? Heads we win or tails the other fellow loses?”

  But the men were tense too. Someone turned to Wilson and said: “What do you think, sir?”

  Wilson answered: “I think the doctor ought to decide. He’s the one who’ll have the trouble of looking after us, whatever we do.”

  The doctor nodded: “I know that, but I don’t want to influence you.”

  “But if you had to decide for yourself, Doc—”

  He heard the murmur of the men echoing the point, heard also Wilson’s sharp comment: “That’s a hell of a fair question.”

  The doctor hesitated, then suddenly answered, almost to his own surprise: “Okay then, I look at it this way. When fishing’s good you better stay where you are and don’t go upstream. Yes, sir, that’s how I feel, and I’d put my trust in God and Captain Pass and stay on this ship till the cows come home.” (It was the first time he had ever mentioned God to the men from the Marblehead .)

  The men eased into sudden smiles; then one after another came their answers: they would stay; they felt the same; they were glad he felt that way too.

  All at once the doct
or saw that Sun was smiling. He cried out, in genuine excitement: “Why, look at Sun! I said I’d make that feller smile before I was finished, but what’s he doing it now for, I wonder—he can’t understand a word of all this.” So he chattered a few sentences rapidly in Chinese, and Sun answered him, still smiling. Then the doctor told the men: “Well, he says okay, so I guess that goes for all of us.”

  The Janssens put in at the little inlet. By that time it was two o’clock—three hours after the raid. (There had been ample time for the raiders to have reached their base, wherever it was, and to have given full information.) The sun was high and the sky cloudless. The water was too shallow at the pier, so the Janssens anchored offshore, while a single lifeboat transshipped all who wanted to leave in relay trips. There was only one lifeboat that could be used for this; the others had been riddled with bullets and were unseaworthy.

  It was a slow job, taking off passengers and crewmen in this one boat, for there were many who wanted to go. They could not be blamed. They were convinced that the Janssens was doomed. Some were women whom the air attacks had so terrified that nothing—nothing at all—seemed more unendurable than the prospect of another. There was such an even balancing of future possibilities, almost all horrible, that it was hard for many to make a decision at all, and easy for some to change it at the last minute. Dutch officers on board were evidently under orders to stay with the ship, for none went ashore; but several sent wives and children, feeling that the slender chance of life on land was better than the torpedoing or bombing that would almost certainly befall the Janssens at sea. The doctor watched these tearful separations and wondered whether physical wounds or simple human misery could be harder to endure.