They crowded back into a dark corner of the plane, then shoulder to shoulder, heads close together, read the note that came from the wax-sealed envelope.
“The boxes marked (C),” they read, “are to be trans-shipped to the Burma front. They contain quinine and should be guarded with the greatest care.”
“Quinine!” Mary dropped down upon a case marked (C). “Is that what we’re risking our lives to defend! Every drug-store has quinine!”
“Not any more,” said Sparky. “The supply in those cases came from thousands of druggists in the U.S.A. They donated it to the men who are fighting in the mosquito plagued swamps of Burma.
“And don’t you think it doesn’t matter.” He shook a finger. “At our last landing I saw a man who came from those swamps. He was being sent home. They thought he might live. But you should have seen him! Oh, no! You shouldn’t. It was terrible to see a skeleton that’s still alive. Malaria did it. Quinine would have stopped it. Those dirty little Japs have all the quinine trees in the world and that’s one way they hope to win the world. That’s how they fight!”
“Oh! Sparky!” Her voice was hoarse. “You’re always wonderful. If that was all we came for it’s enough—”
“But it’s not. It’s only the beginning. There are the boxes marked (D). We won’t know what’s in them until we are at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains.”
“And then—”
“That, we hope, will be the beginning of the end.”
“Sparky,” her voice was tense, “I’d like to take that quinine to Burma.”