Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [122]
"Whew!" the doctor whistled to himself as he slumped into his chair. The haunting fear stayed with him that the entire scene had been an obscene joke cooked up by some ghoulish mind. But somehow or other Hewitt acted like a man, and like a man who might write just such a letter.
"Passion!" Benoway said to himself. "By heaven! The Lord certainly dispenses uneven quantities of it to different people."
Ruefully, he picked up his own unfinished letter to his wife. He started to read it. "Dearest Nancy:" it began. The colon looked formidable, but all of Dr. Benoway's letters had a colon in the salutation. He had read somewhere a long time ago: "It is always proper to use a colon in the salutation. It is dignified, universal, and appropriate for all occasions, especially when doubt arises as to the proper greeting." The letter ran: I would like to be the first to tell you that I have had a somewhat trying experience and that I have safely recovered from it without the slightest harm or injury. The details of this little adventure must remain a military secret until I see you in person. I can only give you the barest outlines at present, and even some of them may be deleted by the censor.
Some time ago I had to make a routine flight over water. You can probably guess the nature of the mission. As sometimes happens, our plane ran into difficulty, and we were forced down into the ocean. We were able to break out a life raft without much difficulty, and before long we were aboard it.
I am sorry to say that we had not too much water or food for the persons aboard. I was not the senior officer-the plane captain was- but I was given the important task of apportioning our rations amongst us. This I did to the best of my ability, and although there was natural complaining about the smallness of the rations, there were no accusations of unfairness.
The Navy has already announced that we were adrift for four days. Some of the passengers suffered from severe sunburn. All of us had chills, but I must say that when I think of the poor men who have been lost in the great ocean for twenty and thirty days I consider myself lucky indeed that we were rescued so soon.
On the evening of the fourth day, after twelve hours of blazing sun and no rain, we saw a ship just at dusk, but it could not see us. Our captain made an instant judgment of the course on which we might come closest to the ship, and we started to paddle, swim alongside the raft, and pray. The ship passed us by, and I thought my heart would break, but in the darkness-for it was now pitch black-a little dog saw us, or smelt us, or heard us, and started to bark. Of course, we couldn't hear him bark, for if we could have heard him, the men aboard ship could have heard us, but there he was, barking when we were taken aboard. He was a little mixed dog like the one the Baxter's used to have, and I thought him a very lovely dog indeed.
Darling, all during the time I was in that raft and when I was aboard ship, I thought of you. It would have been terrible never to see you again. Once we had a bad time of it when the raft started to ship water, and I prayed pretty furiously, and you were all mixed up in the prayers. I don't want you to worry about anything, Nancy, for I am all right. When I think of what others have gone through, I'm a little bit ashamed, but I must admit that I am somewhat proud to say that I stood up as well as most. Only once was I really beaten down. On the fourth morning, when I saw the great sun again...
Then followed the part about the Aztec sacrifice that had seemed so phoney to him that he had torn it up.
Compared with Hewitt's letter, Paul's wasn't much of a job, and he knew it. For example, he hadn't put in the part about getting all mixed up when he prayed, so that he actually prayed to Nancy and not to God at all. Or that time in the third night when all he could see was Nancy. She had even obliterated the ocean then, and one of the gunners had asked,