CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE   RESCUED

“Oh, Mabel, they’re going on! They don’t see us,” wailed Nancy when the plane dipped low on the horizon.

Better a thousand times that they had never seen it at all than to endure this agony of disappointment. But Mabel was too intent upon her sun and mirror trick to heed Nancy’s despair. She shifted her position as the plane moved on, and continued flashing the mirror into the sky.

Suddenly Hilda cried out, “Look—they’re turning! They’ve seen us.”

Incredible as it seemed, the plane was swinging back toward them, but it was still very high as it came on.

“It may be a Jap Zero.” Hilda dropped the words like a bomb into their midst.

They had been so obsessed with the hope of rescue by their own people that their dulled minds had not counted on that possibility.

“Too late now,” said Mabel. “They evidently saw my light flashing.”

“Could any thing be worse than this?” asked Nancy.

Their bloodshot, sunken eyes watched in an agony of suspense as the drone of the plane beat harder and harder on their sensitive ears that were so long conditioned to silence.

Suddenly Nancy’s straining eyes recognized the insignia of her own Air Force, and she burst forth above the roar of the plane that was now almost overhead, “There’s our white star in the blue circle. It’s one of our planes!”

They began waving frantically as the plane circled high above them. The pilot was obviously taking no chances that this might be some trick of the Japs. From the burned color of their skins they could be mistaken for Japs from above.

Then Nancy thought of the American flag she always kept in her musette bag with the battered confederate relic. It was rather small, but surely bright enough to be distinguished from above. She was trembling like a leaf in a gale when she found it and waved it aloft. Almost immediately the plane dipped lower.

“Why, it’s a hydro!” burst forth Mabel.

The great ship sped south again dipping nearer the water. About a mile away she turned back, skimming above the waves until she settled down with a great splash and came gliding easily toward them. Then the broad wings were at rest and the motor silent.

A hearty voice from the plane called out, “Can you row closer?”

“We’ll try,” replied Nancy, but she feared her faint, cracked voice did not cover the distance between them.

The oars had not been touched since that horrible day when the men had died. Mabel found one under the seat. Two of them could scarcely handle it. They could as well have used toothpicks for all the movement their feeble efforts brought.

“We can’t make it!” wailed Nancy, and would have wept had her eyes not been too burned out for tears.

“Never mind. We’ll come over,” replied a kindly voice.

A rubber boat appeared under the plane wings, and two men paddled it easily toward them. When Hilda fell twice in trying to get over the gunwale one of the fliers stepped aboard and took her wasted form into his arms. Though Nancy and Mabel were both weak and trembling with excitement they managed to get into the rubber boat with the help of the second man. The other man went back for their coats and bags and soon they were under the shadow of the great wings. Eager hands lifted them bodily into the cabin.

Nancy could never recall afterward all that was said and done as they were lifted inside. But she did remember one man’s hushed voice as he said, “Three army nurses.”

Eager Hands Lifted Them Bodily into the Cabin

Those men in their spotless clothes seemed like angels to the shipwrecked women. They were put into bunks and almost as if by magic someone was handing Nancy a thermos top filled with hot tea. These things couldn’t be real, she kept telling herself. She had only hoped they would happen for so long that now she believed they could not be true.

A doctor the fliers called Lieutenant Holmes, questioned them about how much they had had to eat and drink, then allowed them to have a small portion of concentrated food from a tin, and gave them a cup of water. But Nancy came back to her thermos top of tea. It seemed heavenly to have something hot. She could feel reviving strength flow to her very toes.

“Good thing we brought that hot thermos along,” one of the men remarked.

“Thought Tom would appreciate it,” replied his companion.

Nancy stared incredulously at the man. “Tom,” she repeated. “I had a brother named Tom. He was lost, too.”

She saw the men look at each other. “Tom Dale—your brother?” asked the flier who had given her her food.

She nodded.

“You can’t be—”

“Nancy Dale, Army Nurse,” she replied.

Suddenly a man in army clothes, turned sharply from where he held a can of food for Hilda, and stared at her. Then Nancy saw that the hair under his cap was snow white. Her eyes, so long conditioned to the glare, could see little when she was brought inside, but now she stared at this man incredulously. Was this another mirage? She brushed her hands across her hollow eyes and looked again.

“Take it easy,” said the white-haired man with the pale, thin face. “You’re going to be all right, Miss Nancy. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

“You can’t be Vernon,” she whispered.

“But I am,” he assured her. “You asked us to come out and look for Tommy and here we are.”

“You’ve found him?”

“We’re on our way to pick him up now,” Vernon explained. “But you’d better lie down now and keep yourself quiet or you won’t be able to greet him when we take him aboard.”

He forced her to lie down, and she glanced across to see others looking after Mabel and Hilda.

“You may not find him,” she said wearily. “A person can stand just so much.”

She felt it would not be so terrible after all if Tommy were really dead. Those who had known bitter depths of suffering had told her many times that there were things worse than death, and in those awful days adrift she had learned it was true. She had even stopped praying that Tommy might live. How could she have been so cruel all along as to try to hold him to a life of such hardships?

“A plane has already been over the island,” Vernon explained in answer to her doubts. “A man signaled us from the beach. It must’ve been Tom.”

“When?” she asked.

“Yesterday.”

“We thought we heard a plane yesterday. Why didn’t you rescue him then?”

“There was no place to land. Only a seaplane can get near him.”

The great motors of the plane roared into action again as Vernon finished speaking. He motioned her to lie back and rest, for even his voice was not yet strong enough to carry above that roar.

Nancy had a struggle to force her mind to any degree of calmness. The swift changes of the last few minutes and her renewed hope about Tommy brought an enervating reaction.

Though the island where Tommy had been marooned was the goal of their sailing from the time Olan learned of it, Nancy could scarcely believe they had actually come within reasonable range of it. That the rescue expedition, which she had instigated back on Koshu Island, would be the means of saving her own life, too, seemed now almost uncanny. This war had certainly woven some strange and incredible designs into the tapestry of life.

So relieved was she to sink into the comfort of that berth and know she would be taken back to safety, that not even her suspense about Tommy kept off her drowsiness as the plane gained height. She felt as she once had when going under an anesthetic.

Some time later a gentle hand on her cheek roused her. “We’re flying over the island,” Vernon said in her ear.

She was confused for a moment, then asked, “Is there a window where I can look out?”

He helped her down and over to a window from where she could see the verdant blotch entirely surrounded by a blue lagoon fringed with reefs on which tumbling waves broke, an emerald set in sapphire and pearls. The plane crossed the island at great height, then circled and came back much lower, just leaving a safe margin above the towering palms.

“He signaled from the western shore,” Vernon said.

Nancy saw the gunner’s hand tremble violently as he steadied himself against the seat in front.

The great ship roared south, then north above the western shore of the island.

“There he is! There he is!” cried Nancy, tears of joy streaming down her thin cheeks.

There really was a man waving something white. From the way he ran back and forth Nancy saw he was not weak from hunger as she was.

A few minutes later the plane moved off a safe distance from the reefs and taxied cautiously nearer one of the inlets. A small rubber motorboat, manned by three men, headed toward a passage in the barrier reef. Nancy wondered if she could live through the interval until she could know if the marooned man was really Tommy. She and Vernon crossed to the opposite window, which gave a view toward the island, but the plane was too low for them to see beyond the high waves pounding on the reef.

“I’m sure I look like a scarecrow,” said Nancy, suddenly aware of her looks. “Could they spare me a little water to try to scrub some of the grime off my face and hands?”

Vernon put a bit of water in a helmet and took a folded handkerchief from his pocket to use as a washcloth. He even produced a small piece of soap. Though Nancy scrubbed and scrubbed, and felt slightly better for the performance, she decided that nothing less than a day’s soaking in hot water would produce satisfactory results.

She saw that Mabel and Hilda still slept, and she left them in peace. Already she was beginning to wonder when they would let her have more water and another portion of food. But Lieutenant Holmes had been very positive in dealing out the amount they could have at first.

Vernon and Captain Crawford, the young blue-eyed pilot, filled the seemingly interminable interval by asking Nancy about the shipwreck. While she gave them the horrible details Nancy’s gaze kept turning toward that door through which the boatmen would return.

“How long were you adrift?” asked Captain Crawford.

Nancy shook her head. “I’m not sure. Olan Meyer made notches on the stern seat until he died—after that it didn’t seem to matter. There’re seven notches on the seat.”

“They left Koshu Island on October third,” Vernon recalled. “This is the sixteenth.”

“Thirteen days,” said Nancy. “Seems more like thirteen years.” She glanced toward the door again. “Why don’t they come back? Could they have struck a reef?”

The captain glanced at his watch. “Not quite time yet.”

But even as he spoke the throb of the motorboat beat on their ears again.

“They’re coming!” she cried, and staggered toward the exit.

Minutes had never seemed so long to Nancy, but eventually the boat came into range. Aquiver with expectancy, she searched the faces of the boatmen. Then her gaze came to rest on a sun-baked, nut-brown man with a long brown beard. Sick with suspense, for she could not believe that man was Tommy, she wavered and the oncoming boat blurred. She felt Vernon’s arm about her waist, steadying her.

Suspense, fear, then incredible joy followed in swift succession, for Tommy was calling her name. Her head was whirling so that he seemed very far away. But there he was really stepping into the plane. A moment later she was in his arms. Then all her agony was dissolved in complete joy, for his arms about her gave assurance that their suffering was over.

“They told me you were here,” he said, when he could command himself to speak, “and also about the horrible things you’ve been through.”

“No more awful than yours—nor half so bad,” she said, looking up into his eyes that had been so much like hers before her own became so hollow.

“After the first month I didn’t fare so badly,” he reassured her. “For a while I didn’t believe I’d make it. Since my stomach healed, though, it’s been endurable.”

“You don’t look starved,” she said.

“A man can live a long time on fruit, roots, coconuts and fish. But say, will I be glad to have a real meal once more!”

“Then what are we waiting for, old scout!” exclaimed Captain Crawford, slapping the rescued man on the back. “We’ll take you straight back to Koshu Island where there’s plenty of food and water, and a few decorations for all of you who’ve shown so much valor in action.”