miserably. “Or at least I don’t. I’ll leave it up to Mabel or—” she
paused to glance at the other girl.

“Hilda Newton,” said the strange nurse. “But heavens, I have no idea
what we should do.”

“Neither have I,” stated Mabel. “If you’re all agreed I move we put the
bluejacket in command. He probably knows more about this business than
all of us put together.”

This met with the hearty approval of all except the surly, still
befuddled corporal. The sailor introduced himself as Olan Meyer, and
the rest in turn told their names.

A few minutes later Olan dealt out the morning’s portion of food and
water. And so began the monotonous round of nights and days that were
to stretch on as endlessly as the sea on which they drifted.

                             CHAPTER TWENTY

                               THE PLANE

At the end of the first week when there was still no hope of rescue,
nor any sight of land, their water had to be reduced to one portion a
day. Only by the notches Olan Meyer cut on the stem seat, could they
tell how much time had passed. After the first few sunrises, days and
nights seemed a muddled succession without hope of ending.

Once they saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon, but it vanished
swiftly. Another time Nancy thought she heard the drone of a plane, but
no moving speck appeared in all the cloudless, blazing blue overhead.
She wondered if her mind was weakening and she was beginning to hear
sounds, as a wanderer in the desert sees mirages.

On their second day afloat Nancy had had another chill, then to her
amazement, after the fever had burned itself out, the attacks did not
come back. Her illness made her think of the small golden vitamins
Major Reed had given her. She found them still in her musette bag. By
dealing them out one a day to each person there would be enough to last
them two weeks.

A sail had been hoisted after their conference the first morning, and
Olan Meyer steered toward what he believed was their original
destination. But the wind soon died down, the sail fell slack, and it
was only useful as shade from the blazing sun.

The day after her fever cleared Nancy was sitting beside Olan as he
studied the Pacific map, which had been placed in the lifeboat along
with a book of navigation instructions.

“Where is Koshu Island on this map?” she asked.

After a brief search he pointed it out with a grimy finger.

“Do you know of any coral-surrounded islands northeast of it?” she
asked.

“Plenty. Why?”

“There was one—about a day by water from Koshu, where they tell me my
brother’s plane went down,” Nancy explained. “His gunner was made a
prisoner by the Japs. He turned up at our hospital back there on Koshu.
Soon as he’s able he’s going to guide a plane back to the island.”

“Got any more details?” asked Olan.

“Nothing, except that the island was covered with a jungle. As far as
Vernon knew there were no native villages there.”

“And it was surrounded by coral reefs?”

“Entirely, so that no big boats could go close. But he said there were
passages where small boats could enter the lagoons.”

“Twelve hours journey north of Koshu,” repeated Olan, while making some
mental calculations. “We must have been somewhere in that neighborhood
when we were struck.”

“Oh, are we?” asked Nancy eagerly.

“We were,” he corrected. “Lord knows where we’re at now. A fair wind
for forty-eight hours took us in the opposite direction.”

He pointed out where he surmised they had been sunk, and indicated the
approximate direction in which the wind had taken them.

“I figure the group of reefs and islands you’re talking about is
somewhere back here.”

“And northeast of Koshu,” she observed. “Wouldn’t it be safer to try to
go back in that direction?”

“You’re optimistic, lady. Distances in a tub like this take a hundred
times longer to cover than on our transport.”

“I know that. But we may as well be going somewhere definitely as
drifting like this. We might even be able to locate the island where
Tommy was marooned.”

“Any land, no matter what—a jungle would be a thousand times better
than this,” said Hilda Newton.

It was two days later, however, before another breath of wind came to
stiffen their sail. The heat was almost unbearable by day while the
cold penetrated to their marrow at night. Nancy thanked her lucky stars
that she had been wearing her overcoat at the time they were struck,
and that Mabel had brought hers along. Hilda had not been so fortunate.

When the breeze stirred at last Nancy sat beside Olan, watching how he
set the sail into the course he desired. It made little difference to
any of the others what direction they took, so long as it brought an
end to their misery. The very fact that they were moving boosted their
morale.

But the fair wind was only a brief hope. It fell away after a few
hours, and the horrible pall of inaction closed down on them again.
Sometimes for an hour or so they would recite poetry, tell jokes or ask
riddles—anything to keep their minds off reality. In this way the
first week dragged by. Not once during that time was there a drop of
rain to renew their diminishing water supply. So far they had used only
from the lifeboat’s supply, saving the individual canteens for a
reserve.

The corporal, Ned Owens, showed little improvement in disposition, even
after his mind cleared. He kept aloof from the others and seldom took
part in the nurses’ attempts to brighten their situation. The first few
days a fever kept him on fire with thirst, and he was violently
seasick. Knowing something of what he must be enduring Nancy offered
him her portion of water at the end of an unusually hot day.

“You take it and I’ll knock your block off!” Olan flared, when Ned
hesitated at the offer.

Rather than precipitate a fight Nancy finally drank the water herself.
By the end of the first week the feud between the two men, which
started with selfishness on one side and firmness on the other, had
grown to alarming proportions. Every time Olan dealt out the water Ned
accused him of giving him less than his portion.

One evening after they had sat through the worst heat they had yet
endured, Ned demanded that Olan give him his entire allotment of water
and let him drink it as he pleased.

“I won’t do it! You haven’t got the grit to restrain yourself,” Olan
stated.

Nancy had been surprised to find just before their evening ritual of
food and drink that Ned had moved next to Olan on the boat seat.

Suddenly just as Olan was measuring out a portion of water, Ned’s arm
swung round and struck him in the pit of his stomach. Caught unawares
the keg slipped from Olan’s hand to the bottom of the boat, and the
precious fluid gurgled out into the bilge water. While the two men went
into a grip, Nancy grabbed the keg from under their feet, but she was
not quick enough to save more than half of the remaining water.

She dragged the keg with her toward the prow as the raging men
grappled. Jim Benton and Hilda were sitting in the prow, and the slack
sail had at first cut off their view of what was happening. The men
were already at each other’s throats before Jim realized there was a
row, and rushed to separate them.

Terrified, the women feared the struggle would capsize the boat. They
huddled together in the prow to keep a balance. The corporal was a much
larger man than the bluejacket, and soon had him down on the seat, his
hands clawing at his throat. Jim could not break their grip with his
bare hands. Hilda had snatched up one of the oars, as if to help.
Suddenly he seized it from her and cracked it down over Ned Owens’s
head. The corporal crumpled into the bottom of the boat like a crushed
egg.

The moment his hands relaxed their grip on Olan’s throat, the
half-conscious man rolled into the water with a list of the boat.
Without a moment’s hesitation Jim Benton went in after him, shoes and
all. The shock of the cold water revived Olan’s faculties sufficiently
for him to get a death grip on Jim. In spite of all the soldier could
do to break the hold, Olan pulled him down under the waves with him.
The horrified women stared, helpless to save either one.

Nancy was making a motion to get out of her shoes, when Mabel held her
back by main force. “You’re insane!” she screamed. “You haven’t
strength to do anything for them.”

But it was already too late. Even while Mabel held Nancy back the two
men went down again, and they saw them no more. Too stunned for speech
they could only stand and stare, hoping against hope that they might
come up again.

Then Hilda, the little blue-eyed girl, wavered, and Mabel gently eased
her to the bottom of the boat as consciousness slipped from her. After
bathing her face with sea water Mabel and Nancy dragged her up to the
boat seat, and Nancy held her head in her lap. For a long time they
were too stunned for speech.

Mabel was the first to say anything as she stared with fixed eyes at
the bottom of the boat. “Now we’re left to the mercy of that thing!”
she moaned, pointing to the corporal.

“It would be better if we were all dead,” said Nancy in a hollow voice.

Mabel finally prodded Ned Owens with her foot, turning him over. Blood
flowed from the gash on the back of his head made by the oar. Even
though she dreaded to see him regain consciousness, the instincts of
her profession would not be denied. She finally squatted in the bilge
water to do what she could for his injuries. She cleaned the wound
after a fashion and dusted it with some sulfa drug from her first-aid
kit, then drew the edges together with some sticking plaster. They
feared he would roll into the sea if they dragged him to the seat, so
they pulled him into the prow where only his feet were in the water.

When Hilda stirred again she sat up, her fixed eyes turned across the
waves that had swallowed the men. She was like one under the influence
of dope and made no complaint, only sat there hour after hour as if the
life had gone from her, too.

Mabel took a last look at Ned in the twilight and saw he was still
breathing, though he showed no signs of regaining consciousness. “If
he’ll only stay that way till morning,” she said. “I’ll feel much
safer.”

For once Mabel’s wish was fulfilled. The first rays of daylight
revealed the corporal lying where she had left him. She bent over him
almost eagerly. Her shaking fingers, that pressed his wrist, found no
pulse.

“God is good,” she said fervently, looking up from her knees at the
other two. “No telling what we’ve been spared.”

His passing was such a relief to them all, that even Hilda found
interest enough to help them heave the body over into the sea.

When the lapping green water had swallowed him up Nancy said, “Let’s
recite the Twenty-third Psalm for _all_ our dead.”

She emphasized the all, for in spite of their relief at this last
death, she felt that none should be excluded from their simple burial
ritual.

With the knowledge of navigation that she had picked up from Olan,
Nancy steered a southeast course with every fair wind that blew. Though
their number was now only half the original, she dared not increase
their water supply, as so much had been lost when their keg overturned.
By careful economy they would have food and water for a few more days.

After the death of the three men they rarely spoke. There seemed
nothing left to say, and speech was such an effort with rasping vocal
chords and cracked lips.

Once they sighted a smudge of smoke that promised to be a boat on the
horizon. Though there was always the possibility it might be a Japanese
boat, even captivity seemed preferable to their present condition.
Nancy tacked to catch a bit of wind taking her in that direction. But a
nearer approach showed them it was merely mist from spray breaking on a
reef. But the island was barren, with not a single palm to pierce the
burning sky.

Before night closed them in they saw other reefs, but all were barren.
They decided to lower their sail and drop anchor for the night to keep
the current from sweeping them against some hidden reef.

Twice during that day Nancy had thought she heard the drone of a
distant plane. If any had passed they had been hidden by fleecy clouds.

In mid-morning the following day they were becalmed again under a
cloudless sky. By crouching in the bottom of the boat during the
hottest hours they could shade their heads under the boat seat, making
the heat slightly more endurable.

Nancy was lying there almost in a coma, when there came the sound of a
plane, clear and not too far away. For a moment she did not stir,
believing it the sound she had imagined a score of times before. Then
suddenly Mabel called out, “Nancy it _is_ a plane! I can see it!”

“Coming this way,” Hilda added.

“Hoist the sail! They can see us easier with the sail up!” cried Mabel,
her last reserve of strength pouring out into action.

The three of them tugged at the sail a moment, then Mabel stopped to
bend over her musette bag. “I’m going to try flashing a mirror at
them!” she explained. She opened her compact, containing a mirror
almost as large as her palm. “I’ve heard of people catching the sun’s
rays in a mirror and attracting planes that way.”

They had discussed this as one device for getting the attention of
fliers in the early days of their shipwreck. Nancy and Hilda got the
limp sail up, while Mabel set the mirror to catch the sun’s rays and
reflect them toward the approaching plane. Then they realized that the
silver speck was not coming straight over, but would pass well to the
south.

“Oh, dear God, make it come on!” prayed Mabel.

Both the other nurses were praying, too, in a frenzy of hope and
despair. Mabel tried the mirror trick she had practiced several times.
Three long flashes from the sun-touched mirror, then three short, then
three longs—SOS. Again and again she repeated the signal, but the
plane kept steadily on its course.

Nancy felt she couldn’t endure to see it go entirely out of sight.
Moaning she pressed her face into the slack sail, and leaned against
their mast, certain this was their last hope.

                           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.”

[Illustration: _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.”

                           Transcriber’s Note

Punctuation has been normalized.  Variations in hyphenation have been
retained as they were in the original publication. The following
changes have been made:

The chapter entitled “Camouflage” on Page 65 is the second instance of
Chapter Five. It has been changed to “Chapter Six”, to agree with the
Table of Contents and its sequential position.

Too many times spies have {deducted —> deduced} from the nature of a
group’s training {P. 72}

by the time we finish with all these {innoculations —> inoculations}
{P. 98}

a huge waterspout burst high in {the} air {P. 140}

“Don’t {knew —> know}. I just got a whiff of a change.” {P. 166}

Those first patients had to be {stretched —> stretchered} on the sands
of the beach. {P. 187}

Italicized words and phrases are presented by surrounding the text with
_underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Nancy Dale, Army Nurse, by Ruby Lorraine Radford