March, 1944
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and He had not allowed the fire to kindle. It -was necessary to retrace our journey up the river a distance, to the mouth of another river, and down that to reach the other coastal town. Two nights later, sometime after mid night while on watch, I saw thé Hol lander suddenly sit upright in his boat and look hurriedly to the left and right. “We are in the wrong, river,” he announced. ‘‘How do you know?” “The other river is much wider.” ■He called to a Dyak who was fish ing nearby and began to question him.- The answer confirmed his féar. The Hollander had been a merchant in that section for twenty-two years, and he knew that territory perfectly. When God sends a guide, I thought, He doesn't send a novice. And when we had needed another guide, He had had the native Dyak there to direct us. We turned back and finally reached the right river. Further Testings Then there was the morning when two of the three faithful Dyak boys who were with us were dying. They had slept inside the smaller boat with the doors closed, and had been overcome by the fumes from the en- girie. We tried every remedy we knew, but soon realized they were beyond human help. Then we fell on our faces before God, praying for them. They had risked their lives to come this far with us; we could not fail, them now. We lost track of the time as we prayed, but before long one of the boys started to move. In a few hours they were able to sit up, weak but alive. The Hollander had looked on as we pirayed. Later he said,- “I never. ex pected to see those boys get up. I
already had chosen the place along the river to bury them.” This gave me a.n opportunity to witness to him of Christ’s saving power. One morning we Stopped along the river as we were nearing the coast and dangerous waters. The Hollander and I went ashore to send a message which would be phoned to Katapang, and from there go by radiogram to the American Consul in'"Batavia. We rejoined the family and my wife told of the prayer meeting they had had with the children while we were gone, and of our little girl’s praying, “Dear Jesus, here we are. We don’t know what to do. If You want us to .go back, if You want us to get out, it is all right. If You want us to stop here, it is all right, tpo.” We waited a few days, but no plane came. Then we tried to make arrange ments with a Chinese to rent a motor launch to take us to Soekadana, a place along the coast. We couldn’t use our river boat, as we had to cross twenty miles of open ocean and the waves were high. The Chinese was reluctant to let us have the boat, but finally agreed to our using it if we could get the engine together and running. I had never worked on an engine like it before, but I asked God to help us, and three and one-half hours later, I had it running. That evening with deep emotion we said good-by to our three Dyak boys who the next morning were to Start up river in our boat, homeward bound. Then we moved off, down river, in the Chinese launch. That night we were startled to see two skyrockets shoot up over the jungle and knew it to be some kind of signal to the Japanese, that it was the time to come in. At five o’clock in the morning we reached Soekadana. The jungle was behind us, the Java Sea before, and
over all a bright moon shone, painting the picture of that lonely river town indelibly upon our ipemories. After much bargaining with two taxi driv ers, we were driven the seventy-six kilqmeters to Katapang, though we had to abandon some of our luggage. A Boat Provided Three or four hours later, we arrived at the end of the line, at the town of Katapang, little knowing how \ve were to get on from there. To our surprise we saw a Chinese junk at anchor in the middle Of the river. It was incredible ;— C h i n é s e junks never camé down to this sec tion. But there it was. We found that the owner, a Chinese,, had escaped and started south from French Indo china. He had been waiting in Kata pang three months; Two weeks before, the Government officials • hád ' re quested him to take a load of rubber to Java. The junk had been loaded with rubber and he could have left; but he had waited. There wasn’t enough wind, he said. We praised the Lord and knew it was not the wind the Chinese' Captain had waited for, but for passengers, though he knew nothing, about them. Surely God had kept him there until we got on hoard. 'There was no more wind then than there had been, but as soon as we were all on board, he began to get the sails ready. The next morning about nine o’clock, we started off across the Java Sea in our slow, stately junk, her sails filled with wind. As we moved off, we looked away to the1right and saw what we knew were Japanese boats coming in. We found, after we reached Java, that Katapang was taken at 11:30 that morning, just two and one-half hours after we left! The final, chilling words had come from the radio station i at Katapang, “The Japanese are here. This will be the last message you will hear from us. We are destroying this station immediately. Orange Boven! (The House of Orange must remain, above.)” Crossing the Java Sea will long be a memory of misery to us. The sea there was full of coral reefs and the Chinese Captain had "never sailed it before. He was a brave old fellow, utterly fatalistic. We had told him, through an interpreter, to go due south, but according to our compasses he was headed southwest. Mr. Wil liams had a Kress compass that had cost 25 cents, I had one that had cost $3.50 and an Eurasian (half Javanese and half Dutch) had a compass that had cost $50. Because he had the better compass he decided to bè the Navigator! The Chinese Captain had his compass, too, a very crude thing, but he'had confidence in it. All our compasses agreed, as a matter of fact. [ Continued on Page 114]
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