The Story of Dr. Wassell by James Hilton Page A

suddenly alive in a still world. For a mile or so ahead
British soldiers were jumping down from trucks and cars, shouting excitedly
as they threw down gear. The road was lined with tall trees, and beyond the
trees were rice fields channeled with running water. The doctor could not
help thinking it was rather like Arkansas, for there too were tall trees and
rice fields. It was a fine choice for a stopping place—in happier days
not a bad place for a picnic, either. He wondered if the Dutch and Javanese
had ever had picnics there, and all at once that reminded him of
something—he had never kept his promise about that giant ice-cream
feast for the men and the nurses. He was sorry about that; he liked to keep
his promises, and now, as if to wipe the regret from his mind, he silently
made another promise: “I’ll get these men safely to Tjilatjap, and I’ll put
them on a ship, and I’ll stay with them till safety…” That, he suddenly
realized, was more than a promise; it was a decision made to himself, and in
Some ways, come to think of it, it was a prayer.
    The doctor rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and got down from the car.
Already the sun was lowering, and the air though warm, lay fresh and pleasant
under the shade. Wilson and Sun were waking; Francini still slept, but the
doctor leaned into the back of the car and gently waked him, for he had to be
attended to; that was the first job of all. Meanwhile hundreds of men along
the road ahead were scurrying about in units of concentrated yet somehow
independent effort—some were changing or washing clothes, others making
tea or heating cans of baked beans over blowpots, many sluicing themselves in
the rice-field channels and lying naked in the sun to dry. Little Javanese
boys, appearing as it were from nowhere, shinned up cocoanut trees and
dropped the nuts to the men, who gave them small coins in exchange; the men
knocked open the nuts and drank the green milk out of them. All this varied
activity the doctor watched out of one eye while he serviced his three
passengers; then he restarted the car and drove slowly along the length of
the convoy till he spotted the truck in which the five others were.
    He found them. Two British soldiers who had driven the truck were making
tea by the roadside; they gave him a cheery greeting and shouted that his
boys were all right, only tired. The doctor nodded and climbed into the
truck. He was glad his boys had at least given the impression they were all
right; his last instructions had bidden them do that. He dropped his voice as
he saw the supine figures lying on stretchers with British Army coats thrown
over them to keep off the glare of the sun; some of the men had nothing but
thin pyjamas underneath. “Well, boys,” he exclaimed, “how’s everything?” He
said it quietly, almost confidentially, as if he really wanted them to tell
him.
    One of them grumbled: “These trucks sure must run on square wheels,”
    That was a good sign; the doctor liked to hear a grumble. He moved round
to each man, scrutinizing him carefully, seeing if there were any personal
thing to be done; and of course there was, and he did it.
    “These Britishers treating you all right?” he said meanwhile.
    Several answers came then. “Oh, fine. They’re swell guys. They gave us
candy and corned beef. And now they’re making tea for us.”
    “And if you don’t die of a diet like that, then nothing’ll kill you,”
responded the doctor. He turned to McGuffey, who he thought might have been
helping him instead of sitting there crouched against a pile of Army uniforms
as if he were hiding something. All at once he saw that McGuffey was hiding something. “Well, for heaven’s sake…” he began…
    Three Martini was behind the uniforms that were behind McGuffey.
    The doctor went fighting-mad for about a minute and a half. He cursed
McGuffey with a language he hardly knew he knew; then he caught the brown