They answered with nods. The weeks since the outbreak of war had not been spent in idleness. DeWitte had made and discarded plans for just such a moment and had decided upon a final one, drilling them all as to their part in it. Now they knew just what each man must do before the jungle swallowed him.
Lorens unlocked the supply rooms. Behind him ten coolies were chattering among themselves, but each was equipped with the bag he had been drilled to bring on such an occasion. And now they lost no time in breaking open the boxes and barrels and filling those bags. Lorens gathered up the three shoulder sacks which had been kept ready and waiting for the Europeans.
Then, with hammers, hatchets, and crowbars, they set about breaking and dumping tins of fruit and other foods, drums of oil and aviation gas, spilling and fouling bags of rice, effectively ruining what they could not take with them.
“All done, Tuan” — a coolie paddled one brown foot in a slimy paste of oil and rice. “No good more time.”
Lorens looked over the complete desolation carefully. Yes, none of this would be good ‘more time’. Not even to the brown men who were reputed to be able to live and fight on a handful of rice and grass pulled from the roadside. He ordered the coolies out and followed, to find a busy scene.
DeWitte’s guard was drawn up in a soldierly line, rifles in hand. Four more of them fell to the rear, carrying the machine guns. Heys was working over some boxes from which tangles of wire ran away in several directions.
“All right,” he said as Lorens and the supply train came up. “She’ll go up when we want her to.”
DeWitte was watching the sullen rain still beating down, soaking them all to the skin. “No fear of the rain putting it out?” he asked doubtfully.
“Not this. We prepared against that.”
“Then let’s go!”
DeWitte barked an order and his army trudged toward the opposite side of the clearing, Lorens and his carriers falling in behind them when they passed. Only Heys remained in the open. He waited there on his knees beside the boxes, nursing an inch or so of cigarette in his cupped hand. When they reached the fringe of trees, the whole party turned to watch him.
Heys threw aside his shred of tobacco, flexed his wrist in an outflung gesture, and brought the palm of his hand smartly down on the top of the nearest box, giving the other two similar blows in quick succession. Then he streaked toward them. And he had almost reached the shelter of the trees before the first explosion came.
Earth and pieces of torn camouflage nets fell about their ears. Out where the landing field had once been were jagged craters which would swallow up any plane which might try to land. And the huddle of supply rooms and living quarters were nothing but a splintered mass in which a wisp of sickly yellow flame fought back against the bludgeon of the rain.
“Good job, well done,” commented DeWitte. “Now we should be pushing on before those Japs come sniffing around. I take it you want to head straight for Sunda?”
“That’s as good a plan as any,” Heys agreed.
So, simply enough, began an experience which Lorens, long years after, would recall only against his conscious Will. The jungle folded in upon them as if the paw of some gigantic beast had caught them up. Heat of steaming, rotting vegetation and damp of the eternal rain sucked the breath from their lungs. And they were never free from the stench of the slime ankle-deep underfoot.
There were vines which looked like snakes, and snakes which put on the harmless guise of vines. And always, never ending, the constant sting and bite of insects welcoming greedily their new rich blood.
Their only protection against the latter were the bitter quinine tablets they swallowed and a paste for the skin, for which DeWitte promised great things. But it did not work. Time seemed to have no measurement; one simply plodded on through the muck, following the brown legs of the man before him, and, at intervals, becoming one of those who went ahead to cut a path for the party. Lorens wondered dully whether one could ever fight under such conditions.
His answer came soon enough. They chanced upon a game trail bisecting the wilderness they had been blundering through. It angled crookedly off in the general direction of their own path, and the natives squatted down on their heels while Heys and DeWitte studied the earth for tracks.
“Save us hours,” commented the foreman as Lorens joined them.
DeWitte bored a hole in the soft ground with the toe of his boot. “Those hours won’t be of any use to dead men. Suppose they’ve holed up somewhere along here just waiting for us to try a fool trick like that? I say keep on the way we’re going now — ”
“Wait!” Lorens was looking down the tunnel of trees which enclosed the path. Had he or had he not seen that suspicious shaking of a low-hanging vine? How much dared he trust his untrained eyes in this unknown territory of the jungle?
“What is it?” DeWitte was at his elbow.
“There — ’bout a foot beyond that clump of reddish flowers. Thought I saw that vine move.”
DeWitte made an emphatic gesture. With a flicker of movement but no sound the natives melted back into the green. Heys fell to his knee behind the protecting bole of a rotting tree, and DeWitte’s hand on his shoulder pressed the boy into similar concealment. But there were rifle barrels poking through the veil of leaves and Heys had been joined in his retreat by one of the pairs of machine gunners.
Lorens licked sweat beads from his upper lip and tasted the blood from scratches and insect bites. Now that he no longer could keep his mind on the business of just following an ever-moving pair of legs before him, he began to feel all the aches and pains, the burning itching of stings, and hear the dull throb of his own blood in his ears.
A brown-skinned shadow had just joined DeWitte. And now it was going again, slipping away with the ease of one of the huge hunting snakes. Lorens turned his attention to the black-bodied fly which had just planted its sucker in the tender skin between his thumb and finger. He moved to strike it away, only to have DeWitte catch and hold down his hand in savage grip.
And still all there was to hear was the drum of the rain and sometimes the crash of a falling tree eaten out by insects or undermined by the moisture of the monsoon. Lorens had counted three such before DeWitte’s scout materialized beside them again. He made his report in the pidgin language of the coast which both Europeans understood.
“It be little, little of them, Tuan. Maybe four, maybe five, maybe ten. They go all together with black boy. He show them road. They have shoot many times guns. But do not know we be here, Kawaka think.”
“Ten thousand submachine guns,” mused DeWitte. “Look here, Kawaka, suppose some men were to go out through the jungle and come around behind them. Then these men could — ”
But Kawaka’s wild mop of fuzzy hair was already nodding in energetic approval.
“Can do, Tuan. Only take no guns — this better!” He drew from his waistcloth a foot and a half of naked and well-polished steel, steel which did not lack either keen point or sharpened cutting edge. “We go now — Kawaka take good fighters!”
DeWitte crawled over to Heys, leaving Lorens the nearest to the trail. So it was he who caught first sight of the invaders. Lorens had always imagined that the Japanese would be smaller and darker editions of the Malays he had seen. But the soldier who pushed cautiously out into the game trail was fairly tall. His pot helmet, stained to the same shade of olive green as the jungle, shadowed most of his face, but the quick ease of his movements gave Lorens the impression that he was young, young and a seasoned hand at the present dangerous game.
He did not come all the way into the open. After an examination of the trail, he faded back into a screen of brush. But Lorens, having seen him disappear, was able after a moment or two of concentration to pick out his outline through the foliage. And his own rifle swung slowly into line with a point about twelve inches below that helmet as his finger crooked about the trigger.
DeWitte was gone, back into the jungle to check on the native flan
king force. The Japanese remained as motionless as if he had put down roots and become part of the bushes he had taken refuge in. Did he suspect their presence and was giving them opportunity to betray themselves? Or was he just following the routine of an advance scout in hostile territory? Lorens was impatient at his own ignorance. Had the Japanese party stopped for some reason?
Lorens’ nose itched, and he dug it forcefully into the back of his hand, rubbing it with an energy which made his eyes water. What might a sneeze do now?
The native attack began with a scream which might have torn from the throat of an enraged panther. And that sound jerked Lorens’ muscles in instinctive reaction. He squeezed the trigger. The bush by the trail thrashed into life with a broken cry. The crack and whine of the rifles, the steady horrible laughter of the machine guns, filled the cutting, only to be overtopped and borne down by the screaming which never stopped.
Lorens fired on methodically into the maze of trees, vines, and bushes ahead. But he never caught sight of the enemy again. And the battle was over before he had fired more than six times.
One of the Malays showed head and arm out of the trail wall, waved at the gunners, and disappeared again. Rightly they interpreted this as a cease-firing signal and obeyed, just as DeWitte came out grinning, wiping one hand first on a handful of leaves, then on the seat of his slacks.
“All right, boys,” he called. “We got us some trophies. Anybody interested in a nice pig-sticker?”
He was waving an odd-looking short sword. Kawaka joined him a moment later with a pair of field glasses swung on their thong around his dirty neck.
Heys stood up and stretched. “So that’s that. Suppose it was all your work; we didn’t manage to get any?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Somebody picked off their scout with as clean a shot as I’ve ever seen.”
Lorens was making a serious job of tightening the carrying strap of his rifle, of taking a drink from his canteen. Somehow he didn’t want to remember that shot and its result. Nor did he want to push forward with the rest and go trophy-hunting. He only wanted the enemy to remain a greenish shadow in a helmet without a real man’s face.
They were on their way again shortly. But now there was no more said about using the easier paths of the game trails. If the enemy were being guided by local natives as Kawaka had reported, then the game trails became traps.
On the second day they came to a deserted kampong and there thankfully crawled into shelter for the short rest DeWitte would allow them. There was no evidence of why the villagers had left, but the empty homes had lodged only bats and lizards for some time. And the jungle had already sent runners into the weed-choked fields.
Kawaka and two companions slung bags of scant provisions from their belts and went on, scouting ahead toward the Straits in hope of sighting a ship to put the whole company back on the soil of Java again. The three Europeans speculated endlessly about the war and what was happening to their forces up and down the Islands. Now that there was no longer even the static-cut scraps of radio news to build upon, they felt particularly helpless and shut away from the world.
“Something must have upset all our plans.” Heys paused to explore his upper teeth with his tongue in quest of an elusive grain of rice.” Go to all that work to get the field ready and then never even use it once. Bad luck that.”
DeWitte spat with expert marksmanship at the head of a lizard that was peering at them out of the ragged thatch. “Looks as if everything folded up mighty fast, Ever see a dyke wall give way once the sea has found a leak? The whole thing just sort of caves in all at once. These Japs must have found our weak spot and broken through, and now our whole defense is giving away. Wonder how the Americans are holding out up there on that rock of theirs — what do they call it now?”
“Bataan,” supplied Lorens. “But what will happen if it is all giving away as easily as you say?”
“Well, we’ll just keep on retreating, making it as unpleasant and as long a job as we can. Then we get out — ”
“Out where?” demanded Heys.
“Australia, I guess. Take us a breathing spell there and get organized again and then come back! Come back with everything and give it to ’em.” His big hands were fists which he pounded on the flooring of the hut. “Me, I’ve always believed what Admiral Helfrich did, that the best time to stop wars is before they start. If anyone can pull us through this mess, he can. And some day I’m coming back here — when I do I’m staying — permanent!”
“ ‘Vive le Geus! Is nude leus,’ ” repeated Lorens out of his memory.
Heys’ broad thick eyebrows went up. “ ‘Long Live the Beggars! The sword is drawn.’ Yes, that is as appropriate today as it was four hundred years ago — ”
“Only it’s machine guns now,” commented DeWitte, “not swords. I remember learning that piece about the Beggars in school back home. Wonder what’s happened there now?”
“And where is ‘home’?” asked Heys.
“Oh, Varlaam, a little fishing village — ”
“But I know it well!” Lorens cried. “Our home was near there. Tell me, do you know Capt. Wim Smits?”
DeWitte shook his head. “It’s been almost thirty years since I left. Doubt if I’d know my own brother if I met him tomorrow. When a man comes out to the Islands, he leaves the old life behind, and some day it comes to seem as if all he remembered back there really belongs to someone else. Java is more real to me now than the Netherlands. And some day we’re going back to be a nation ourselves! Just you wait. We aren’t going to allow men who never saw the Islands to tell us how to manage our affairs, not always we aren’t! And the Netherlands army still in the field is ours.”
Heys spat out the cud of leaves he had been chewing to take the place of cigarettes he could not smoke. “Your better days may be coming, but the man who built this house didn’t see them. Look what he did to old Ganesha over there.” He pointed to the opposite corner.
In the half light Lorens was just able to make out the squat clay statue of the elephant-headed god. But poor Ganesha was hoisted into a very uncomfortable position, standing on his head, held firmly in his undignified pose by two sticks.
“Bankrupt, eh?” commented DeWitte. “That’s what it means,” he explained to Lorens. “When a man goes bankrupt here, he tells the world of his misfortune by setting the god of Good Luck upside down — it’s logical enough. Maybe as a nation we’d better turn our Ganesha topside down.”
Lorens crossed the room and pulled away the sticks to right the crude image. Stood upright on his broad base again, Ganesha looked relieved, for the mouth under his curling trunk gaped in what the potter must have intended to represent a beaming smile.
“Ganesha should favor you at that,” went on DeWitte. “They say he smiles on pen-pushers, too, and you seem to enjoy scribbling. Maybe by giving the old boy back his dignity you’ve done us a stroke of luck.”
“Be better yet if you had some butter for him,” suggested Heys, “or honey. He has a sweet tooth. Here, give him a present!” Lorens caught the crumpled pack of cigarettes the other tossed him. “They’re only a temptation if I keep ’em in my pocket. So let Ganesha have them. He ought to be grateful, they’re the last of my American ones.”
So they left Ganesha right side up with a half-filled packet of American cigarettes to molder at his feet, though Heys still claimed that there was greater virtue in honey and butter. But Lorens liked to think that the little god sent them on their way with his broad smile, and he would not have been too greatly surprised if the elephant trunk had waved in salute when they ducked out of the low doorway.
Although the rain had stopped for the moment, there was no hope of keeping dry, for the soaked foliage unloaded water on them at every step they took, plodding on toward the sea and Java.
7
THE PATRIOTISM OF HU SHAN
A roll of sound beat down the narrow valley, its cadence flattened a little by the rising wind. Lorens did not even lift
his aching head in answer. He knew only too well what it was, another sentence written in their story of sullen defeat. Somewhere above, the Landstorm had blown up another road pass. And he could both taste and smell the oily smudge from the burning fields where night and day the rich fortune of this land roared up in flames. This was the Java he had fought his way back to — a Java being ruthlessly destroyed foot by foot by its own rulers.
Somewhere down along the stream he now followed toward the sea was the flying field where Piet had been reported three days ago. And Piet was still his nominal commander-in-chief. But if this was just another false clue, one of the many he had tried to run down in the last weary days, he would turn back and join the first party of Landstorm he could find. Just as DeWitte, Heys, and their Outer Islands men had done the morning after they had landed, come ashore from that stubborn steering Chinese pearling lugger they had commandeered as it put in for water on the Sumatran coast.
There was a new sound now, above the echoes of the blasting. Lorens looked up in time to see the black cross of a bomber printed against the afternoon sky. So there really was a flying field down here; that much of his information was right. Now if it was also true that Piet was there — !
Here was another bomber, and a third — but they weren’t heading inland as he had expected. They were shooting out toward the sea.
He quickened his pace, flailing outspread arms to sweep a path through brush. Then he almost fell out upon a road, newly and hastily made by the look of it. Smoother footing allowed him to break into a jog-trot.
After that it was easy enough to find the field, a square of packed and pounded earth protected by wire strung around raw posts. And close to the nearest corner was a little knot of men who shielded their eyes as they watched a last bomber licked up by the clouds.