79
February, 1944
OUT OF BORNEO [Continued from Page 46]
clicking his heels, bowed and said as he shook hands with my wife, “ Good- by, Mrs. Mouw. it’s good-by forever.” We left them, then, and they re turned to their work, breaking up machinery, dynamiting bridges, and setting fire to ten or twelve store houses of rubber. It was the only way. In just a few minutes, Pontianak was in flames. Natives* were milling up and down the banks of the river, pushing wheelbarrows, on bicycles, carrying packs of their belongings on their backs, hurrying in all directions. The river was full of dugouts, sam pans, row boats, and anything that would float. Fear was written on all faces. We walked to our boat, bowed our heads, committed our way to our heavenly Father, knowing not where to go, and started hack up the river toward our home. It seemed the only thing to do. The Japanese were com ing in at the mouth of the river. They were pushing in overland toward us.- Surely mountains surrounded us, every way we looked. But God had said, “ I w ill make all my mountains a way.” I clung hard to that promise as the motor caught, and we headed up stream again. (T o be concluded next month )
around us. We ran for some coconut trees and threw ourselves down in the mud, lying flat on our faces behind the trees. In the midst of the falling bombs and the merciless straffing of the city with machine gun fire, later, the words of the Psalmist came as a quiet promise: JJA thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” Mr. Williams and I had gone back to the telegraph office after the raid was over, and were waiting there when we heard a commotion in the street. We' Jjurried out and saw a na tive boy shouting as he raft through the streets, “The Japanese are com ing!” Without further hesitation we aban doned the telegraph office and rushed to rejoin our families and make our way to the river where our boat was moored. On the way we passed some Dutch soldiers who were intent on their work of demolishing machinery with heavy sledge hammers. Recog nizing one of them, I asked: “What goes on?” “The Japanese w ill have this city by midnight. We are destroying it before .they get here.” As we told them good-by, the sol diers all shook hands with us. One,
The sound oi a siren cut short his words, and we hurried into a sampan and crossed the river to our families. But it was not an air-raid, for the ap proaching plane was a Dutch Trans port, coming to take the last fourteen European civilians from the city. The large plane landed on the river and we went out to the pilot to see whether he could take us, too. He shook his head regretfully. Never, I think, shall I forget our feelings as we watched the passen gers get in, the plane leave the water and head for Java. Was this«our last chance, of escape? Had we made a mistake In coming to Pontianak? It was no time for vain regrets; how ever. We went next to the radiogram office to see whether it was possible to reach the American Consul in Java to ask him whether a plane could be sent for us. We waited all day- and night. We were talking to a Malay friend the next morning when the air-raid alarm sounded again. Looking over in the direction of Singapore, we saw five heavy bombers coming, flying in perfect formation. Within a few mo ments, bombs were dropping all
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