“Where?” Gale asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!” one of the girls exclaimed. “Didn’t you have a map?”
“I? No. I do not need a map. The colonel, he has the map. I go where colonel go. Always! Always!” Than Shwe, the native girl, threw back her small head and laughed. “And now we are going back. Sooner than you think, we go. And next time we don’t come back walking, wading, barefoot. Oh, no! We come back in—how you say it—in great triumph. And that day, the colonel, he is the very great man.”
“But Than Shwe,” another girl broke in, “You left us on a raft riding with that young reporter you call Bill. You just have to finish!”
“Bill? Oh yes, Bill.” The native girl brought herself back.
“You know,” she sat up abruptly, “We heard airplanes and we said, ‘It is the Japs. They will bomb us. We shall die.’”
“Was it the Japs?” a girl whispered.
“No. Those were British planes. They dropped packages of food close to the river. Bill, he went off the raft like a beaver and brought us back oh! so much food! Ah, then we had a feast and we all were happy.
“Bye and bye we came to a mountain, a very high mountain. And by the mountain was a very little town.