Chapter 5

It was black as black could be and pouring rain. The winds were terrific. Every now and then a gust of wind would catch my chute, collapse it, and drop me in a free fall of four or five hundred feet. Then my chute would catch again. This happened about six times, and every time I felt that little initial gust of wind I would become petrified with the thought that the chute might not catch this time and I might go hurtling to the ground, wherever it was.

I couldn't see my hand in front of my face---and what a helpless feeling that was! I felt like a piece of paper in a hurricane---as if I were being blown all over the sky. I heard the ship roaring around somewhere until finally the right engine quit altogether. Then all was quiet. I saw a huge red glow appear below me and then heard a terrific explosion--the ship had hit. I prayed that the other fellows had followed right behind me.

The night seemed to get blacker and blacker. It was just like dropping into a big well. I wondered whether I would hit a mountain or land in the jungle or in a river. Jumping at night isn't so easy as in the daytime. I couldn't get my bearings and wouldn't know which way to head to the nearest water. I might even land just beside a village and, not knowing it was there, walk right away from it.

As I was thinking about all this and just as I finished one of my free falls, I suddenly crashed through treetops. I halted abruptly and hung there in space. I couldn't feel the ground with my feet and I couldn't feel anything but little twigs with my hands. I was caught in a tree and my neck felt as if it had been broken. Now that I was no longer falling, I managed to pull myself up into the seat of the chute. I immediately gave a prayer of thanks. How lucky I had been to get out alive again.

I began to worry about the other fellows. Did they jump in time? Kimble was still fighting the controls when I left. I was soaked to the skin by now and feeling quite miserable about the whole thing. Had I done right in jumping without actually being told to? Maybe the other fellows felt that I had deserted them. I was alive and they might be lying dead somewhere near-by. This thought haunted me.

Then I thought back a few hours---back to the tent. The other fellows were probably still sitting there having a swell time, and here I was hanging out on a limb, like so much laundry, in the middle of Burma. I tried to light my cigarette lighter to see just how I was situated, but it was too wet, so I just resigned myself to that position until dawn.

When daybreak came at last, I saw that I was hanging from a tree about twenty-five feet from the ground, on a very steep mountainside. The large trees in Burma go straight up for thirty or forty feet without a single branch. They sprout out very thickly from there on up, and look somewhat like a feather duster. My predicament was that the chute was caught on the lowest branch and I was about six feet from the trunk of the tree, which was five times as big around as I was. Even if I did get over to the trunk, I would never be able to get my arms around it to shinny down.

But i couldn't hang there for the rest of my life, so I started swinging myself by pulling on the shroud lines. I would either pull myself free from the branch by the momentum or else I would swing over and try to grab the tree trunk. I worked up to a pretty good arc and tried to catch hold of the trunk. After several unsuccessful attempts, I caught hold of a piece of bark and clung to the tree for dear life. I managed to get a haphazard foothold in the bark with my toes.

I had undone my chest strap and one leg strap during the night. With a great deal of difficulty, I now got my other leg strap undone. I held onto the chest strap with my teeth and unzipped my jungle kit, which was in my chute seat pack. I threw all the contents of the jungle kit onto the ground. After emptying it, I let it swing back out into space. I had no sooner made one movement to climb down the tree when I immediately lost my grip. With a crash of branches from the underbrush, I joined my belongings on the very solid ground of the Himalayas.

Surprisingly enough I wasn't hurt badly. I had hit a small bush and it broke my fall. All I suffered from the rapid descent was a turned ankle and a very sore rear end. Well, that was one way of doing it, and at least I was on solid earth again.

I gathered the contents of my jungle kit and spread them over my person. As I picked up the package of .45 shells, I looked down and saw that my revolver was missing from the holster. My only weapon was the machete from the jungle kit.

I could hear water rushing near-by and decided to head in that direction, as I figured it would be easier to walk in the stream than through the smothering jungle. There was quite a steep embankment going down to the stream, which was completely covered with undergrowth. As I hacked my way through this brush, I suddenly broke into a clearing of the stream, and the quick change of pressure against the machete made it go hurtling out of my hand and into the stream. I had lost the implement that I needed most of all. I tried desperately to recover it, but all my efforts were in vain.

The going wasn't too bad at first, but I soon came to places where the stream dropped straight down for thirty or forty feet, forcing me to go up and around through the jungle. Then I had to break vines and branches with my hands and they soon were a bloody mess. I was soaked to the skin from rain and perspiration, but I didn't want to discard any of my clothing, for I thought it would probably get quite cold that night.

Dusk approached very unexpectedly and caught me off guard. I managed to find a spot sheltered by a fallen tree, where I built a fire and ate a supper of chocolate and water. Then I doctored myself up a little with iodine and soon fell into a heavy slumber.

With the coming of dawn, I got a good look at myself. My hands felt as stiff as boards, and it nearly killed me to open them. When I started to flex them, all the scratches and cuts opened up again. But in spite of all, I ate some more chocolate, swallowed a quinine tablet, and started again.

The same groping, stumbling progress continued on for the next three days. After my chocolate ran out I ate water cress, bamboo shoots, banana stalks, different types of grass and leaves that I could never identify, a few tropical berries, and even some sort of bug that didn't turn out to be so delicious as the little "survival pamphlet" had described it to be. My matches held out quite well, and I managed to have a fire each night. The fourth day I got a terrific case of dysentery, which slowed me down almost to a standstill.

I was terribly discouraged that fourth night. I had been traveling northeast the whole time without running across the faintest sign of civilization. I thought I would spend the rest of my days wandering around in that steaming, God-forsaken jungle. By this time, my whole body was covered with sores and cuts but they didn't bother me. I just felt numb and tired and hungry. I knew it wouldn't be long before a dose of malaria would hit me, since I already had a fever and my quinine had run out with the chocolate. My brain was dull and I couldn't think clearly. I felt that I had walked my last step. I fell on my face and buried my head in my arms.

I was awake long before dawn, and lying there waiting for daybreak I prayed over and over that I would come to a path before it was too late. My clothes felt as if they weighed a ton, and they were awfully wet and muddy. My body was racked with fever and yet I felt as if I would freeze any moment. My head was spinning like a top. I took about ten groping steps and suddenly came upon a small clearing. I fell on my face again, but this time on purpose---I fell down to kiss the ground. I had found a path at last! I had spent the night ten yards from my first sign of civilization.