CHAPTER TWELVE   A DREAM

Though there had been no one to bid them farewell there was plenty of welcome awaiting the Army Nurses on reaching Sydney. Australian Red Cross workers greeted the young women when they had marched down the long gangplanks. Cars were ready to drive them to the beautiful house, set amid lovely trees and flowers, where they were to stay temporarily.

The nurses had so long been accustomed to the motion of the ship that they now felt a little giddy and unsteady on their feet.

“I’ll surely be glad to get my legs adjusted to earth once more,” said Nancy.

“Feel as though I couldn’t walk straight,” Mabel complained. “Say, but isn’t this a swell joint,” she added, glancing around the lovely room to which she and Nancy had been assigned. There was everything for their comfort. The pretty curtains and bedspreads were a joy after the bareness of their ship cabin. The bath had a real tub in which they could compensate for weeks of indifferent bathing.

They had left late spring at home, but found approaching winter on their arrival in the southern hemisphere. Their heavy coats were in order on all excursions outdoors.

“Funny, but I had the idea we’d have to go round out here half dressed, drinking ices and waving fans,” said Mabel.

“Tommy prepared me for this,” said Nancy a little wistfully. “He left home last fall and found spring when he got here. Strange, but he seems so much closer now that I’m here.”

“Gee, Nancy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he did turn up!”

“Oh, he must! He will, Mabel! Yet sometimes I think it’s sort of selfish of me to—to think he may be spared when such terrible things have happened to other people.”

“I guess it’s natural for us all to have such feelings—that these horrible things can’t happen to us.”

“I suppose we’ll have to get into the thick of it before we fully realize how terrible it really is,” said Nancy, sensing that their first real tests were not far off.

That evening after dinner Lieutenant Hauser called them together and said, “We’ll have several days here in Sydney. We don’t know exactly how long before we’ll be moved out to an evacuation hospital. You’ve all earned a little vacation. Take this time to see the city and enjoy yourselves to the full. Our real work is not far in the future.”

Eyes sparkled, while happy laughter and comments filled the room.

“The only restrictions,” continued Lieutenant Hauser, “are to guard your tongue and be back in your rooms by eleven at night. The Red Cross volunteers have planned many things for you, but you’re free to do as you like. Have a good time, for you’ll need pleasant memories when you get into the thick of things.”

“I’m going to phone Miss Anna Darien,” Nancy told Mabel at once. “Maybe I can go over to see her tomorrow.”

“Oh, you mean your mother’s friend who wrote you about seeing Tommy?”

“Yes. I can hardly wait to hear what she has to say about him. Don’t you want to come with me?”

“Sure! But won’t she be surprised when she hears your voice over the phone?”

“She lives somewhere on the harbor. It will all be sightseeing just the same,” explained Nancy.

“I never dreamed Sydney was such a huge place. They say it’s as large as some of our biggest American cities.”

“It’s surely nice to be in a foreign city where people speak English,” said Nancy.

“Does make it seem more homelike,” admitted Mabel, “even if they do express things a little differently.”

Marian Albans, a Red Cross volunteer, helped Nancy get in touch with Miss Darien in a distant section of the city. Miss Anna was as delighted to hear Nancy’s voice, as Nancy was to hear a familiar, loved friend, speaking in a strange land. Even slight bonds grow stronger when mere acquaintances meet in a strange land, and those bonds that are already strong are drawn much closer. Nancy felt almost as happy as if she were going to see her own mother.

“I hope this phone call isn’t all, my dear,” said Miss Anna over the wire. “We must have time for a visit with each other.”

“That’s what I called for,” explained Nancy. “We have several days to do just as we please. I want to come out there to see you.”

“Just fine! But it’s not easy to get here, my dear. You’ll have to come early in the morning on the ferry that crosses the harbor to take workers from here over to the city. There isn’t another ferry until it comes to bring the workers home. Our manpower is very much rationed here.”

“Then I’ll come early and stay late,” Nancy said with a laugh.

When she put down the phone Marian Albans said, “I’ll be glad to see you to the ferry. It would be rather complicated to give you directions for going there.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” said Nancy gratefully. “That will make it easier, and you can point out the sights as we go.”

When Mabel learned she would have to spend the entire day she decided to go only to the ferry with Nancy, so she could do more sight-seeing in the city.

When they went out early next morning a stormy wind was blowing, which Marian Albans called a “Southerly Buster.”

“Feels as if it’s right off the South Pole,” she said as the two Americans and the Australian went out into the street bundled in overcoats and mufflers.

They caught a tram, as the Australians called their street cars, for a long ride through the fascinating streets of the strange city. By the time they reached the quay where Nancy was to take a ferry across the harbor a driving rain cut off their view. Wind whipped the water into whitecaps, and the crossing promised to be rough.

“Do I have to walk very far after I leave the ferry?” Nancy asked.

“I’ve only been over there once myself—to a place near your friend’s address. But you take a tram on the other side, up the bluff, and get off at Military Road,” explained Marian.

Marian was a very English-looking girl, who told them her parents had come out to Australia a few years before her birth. She had a fair, aristocratic face and the natural bloom in her cheeks of which so many English girls may well be proud.

“Maybe Miss Anna will come to meet me,” said Nancy hopefully.

Nancy Was Delighted to Hear a Familiar Voice

“I hope so,” said Marian, “for there’s a half-mile walk through the bush after you get off the tram on the other side.”

“The bush?” repeated Nancy.

Marian laughed. “I believe you’d call it the woods.”

They put Nancy aboard the almost empty ferry, and started back to the tram in the storm. It was some time before the ferry moved out across the harbor in the pelting, chill rain. Nancy thought it was too bad to have such a miserable day for her excursion, for the rain cut off most of her view as the ferry finally moved slowly away from the dock.

This was the first time since she had left home that Nancy had really been alone. Suddenly she felt loosened and detached from all her recent experiences, and viewed her training as through a telescope. Though the time had not been long since she left home, she felt as different as if actual years had been required for her preparation.

The fact that her brother had been on this very ferry on his last visit to Sydney brought him still closer to her. He had constantly been in the back of her mind during her trip at sea, and today she felt more strongly than ever that he was really alive. She thought how lucky she was to be sent into his field of operations. It seemed prophetic to her that somehow, somewhere they were going to meet again.

The ferry staggered through the gale around a point of land and soon came into sight of the woods on the other shore. Nancy was thrilled to find Miss Anna waiting for her, bracing herself as the wind whipped at her raincape. Her face was damp with the mist as she caught Nancy to her and gave her a hearty kiss.

“How good to see a little bit of America!” she said. “And how stunning you look in that uniform!”

She held Nancy off at arm’s length to inspect her, regardless of the rain beating down on them. And Nancy felt almost as happy as if she were being welcomed by her own mother.

“We’ll be wet as rats by the time we get up to the house,” said Miss Anna, “but it’ll be cozy and warm inside.”

They caught a tram promptly and were soon on the path through the dripping bush. It swung back toward the water and presently Nancy caught a glimpse of the large community building in which Miss Anna made her home with many other workers of various sorts. The house stood on a hundred-foot bluff overlooking the water.

“What a heavenly place!” exclaimed Nancy, looking around delightedly.

“So it is,” agreed Miss Anna, her small brown eyes twinkling. They stepped inside the door and she threw back her raincape.

Nancy followed her upstairs after taking off her galoshes and dripping cap and overcoat. The home-cooked breakfast they sat down to a few minutes later was a feast indeed to one who had eaten camp and ship fare so long. There were peaches covered with thick cream to start with, scrambled eggs, delicious hot muffins and golden butter such as Nancy had not seen in a long time.

“We have our own cows and chickens here,” explained Miss Anna by way of apology for the excellent items on which others were so closely rationed. “I had some coffee made especially for you. Most everyone out here, you know, drinks tea.”

“And it is really good coffee,” said Nancy gratefully.

Most of the other residents of the house had hurried off to catch the ferry back to the city, so Nancy and her friend were not disturbed while at their breakfast. Nancy told of her training and her voyage, and answered numerous questions about mutual friends back home.

Finally she burst forth, “I can hardly wait to hear about Tommy—how he looked, what he said when you last saw him.”

“He looked really marvelous in his uniform, but he was a little nervous, and I’m afraid his visit here wasn’t very relaxing.”

“Why? What happened?”

“The very night he was here they caught some Jap subs in the harbor.”

“Really! Seems I do remember hearing something about the nervy little Nips slipping into Sydney harbor.”

“And we had a box seat for the whole performance,” Miss Anna went on.

“You mean it was really near enough to see what happened?”

Miss Anna nodded, her alert eyes flashing. “During the night I was awakened by the most infernal noise—sounded as though it came from the very bowels of the earth—something you might imagine being a forerunner of a volcanic eruption. But it really came from under the water out in the harbor, the sub’s torpedoes.”

“Heavens! You must have been terrified to be so close.”

“That was only the beginning. Then came our big guns roaring from the forts over on St. George’s Heights. The reverberations shook some pictures off my wall.”

“It must have been like an earthquake,” put in Nancy.

“Then for a half hour there was peace, and by that time it was almost daylight. Then the commotion broke loose again. I got into my clothes and went out to find Tommy looking from the hall window. It was really the sight of a lifetime. There were four little corvettes dropping depth bombs as they careened around the harbor in wide circles.”

“Oh boy, I’ll bet Tommy was excited!” Nancy exclaimed.

“He kept saying, ‘Oh, Miss Anna, if I were only in my plane wouldn’t my bombardier like to drop a few? We’d soon blow those subs to bits.’ But the corvettes were doing a good job. Every time they dropped a depth charge a huge waterspout burst high in the air—and such a terrific noise!”

“I think I should have been yelling—worse than at a football game.”

“We were too tense and frightened. But those corvettes did get that sub.”

“What happened then?”

“A huge dredge boat came out with cranes, and sat over the spot where the sub lay on the bottom. But it was three days before they could get it to the surface.”

“And by that time Tommy was gone,” said Nancy wistfully.

“He was really disappointed not to be able to wait and see it brought to the top, but he had to go back on duty. I wrote him all about it, though. The dredge finally brought the sub up vertically, and it was towed across to Sharpe Island.”

“What an experience that must have been—seeing all that.”

“She had been about sixty-five feet long, but the rear end had been blown away. What crafty creatures those Japs are! You know the front of that sub looked like the mandibles of a beetle. It was equipped with cutting apparatus to tear through the harbor nettings.”

“Gives me the shivers to think how close they came,” said Nancy.

“They say one of the subs got caught in the nets at the harbor entrance.”

“How many dead Japs were there?” asked Nancy.

“Six. Their bodies were burned, according to Japanese custom, and their ashes were buried with military honors.”

“They didn’t deserve it!” exclaimed Nancy bitterly.

Miss Anna looked at her with an odd expression. “We must not become bitter or intolerant, even toward our enemies,” she said with gentle persuasiveness. “We would appreciate our dead being given honorable burial, wouldn’t we?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” exclaimed Nancy, thinking at once of her brother, and how she had prayed that the enemy would treat him humanely if he had fallen into their hands. But she had seen too many pictures of scores of people thrown into common graves to credit the enemy with ever treating any as considerately as these men from the Japanese sub had been treated.

“If by treating their prisoners fairly it will make life easier for even a few of ours in their prison camps it will be worth the effort,” said Miss Anna.

“But it makes me positively ill when I think that Tommy may have fallen into their hands,” said Nancy.

“It would be better a thousand times if he were dead,” Miss Anna told her with conviction. “Tommy had nothing to fear in death, but horrible things to endure if he’s a prisoner of the Japs.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Nancy said. “But I simply can’t believe he’s dead—I can’t.”

“Don’t let wishful thinking keep you from facing reality, my dear. There’re many things worse than death in this war.”

“I’m sure of that. But Tommy isn’t dead! I—I just know it!”

Suddenly Miss Anna’s palm stroked Nancy’s cheek caressingly. “I hope you’re right, my dear. I must admit I, too, have a feeling that Tommy is alive somewhere and needs help.”

Nancy glanced at her friend’s strong, kindly face, and asked, “What makes you think that way, Miss Anna?”

“I’ve never lost the feeling since I first learned his plane had gone down over enemy territory. Then the other night I had such a vivid dream.”

“A dream?” Suddenly Nancy recalled that one of Miss Anna’s lectures had been on the significance and meaning of dreams. She added her own illuminating interpretation to what the psychologists had learned on the subject.

“I thought I was moving through the jungle, trying to locate a voice that was calling me. Then as I went nearer I recognized it as Tommy’s. He was burning with fever and I brought him water from a spring. I was so distressed because the water didn’t quench his thirst. Then I woke suddenly with his words ringing in my ears, ‘Thank you just the same, Miss Anna.’ I’ve hoped all along that Tommy survived a forced landing. Since that dream I’ve felt certain that he is alive.”

Tears were shining in Nancy’s eyes as she said, “You really are a comfort, Miss Anna.”

Her friend went to a near-by bookcase and took out a small volume of poetry. “Here are some verses written by Anna Bright, a friend of mine who lost her son in the last war. Instead of grieving, she used her genius to give comfort to those who had had similar sorrows. Listen to this:

“‘Were he dead, could I weep

For one who gladly bore

A cross that I might sleep

In peace? Could I shed tears

For one who died for duty;

Who laid aside his fears

That I might see the beauty

Of a brave soul; who went

Undaunted to the fray

Nor cared though he be rent

In twain?’”

“That is really the way most of them go,” said Nancy. “Not only our Tommy, but thousands of others.”

“Not only our men, but our women, too, in this war,” said Miss Anna. “I only wish I were young enough to do more. You’re a privileged girl, Nancy, to be prepared to do so much.”