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January 15th, 1942

Whistle blowing like Hell and alarm bells ringing. Someone just threw two life preservers at me, saying the ship is on fire – we’re about ten hours out of Darwin and that one of the preservers is for me and the other for the cast. If we have to abandon ship, they will drop me over the side and then pull me into a life boat. Hell of a chance! The boys tell me the water is alive with sharks. They must be getting fat on the smell, because we sure do stink. They finally got the fire out. It was in the engine room. One of the engineers was badly burned.

Damn near eaten alive by red ants tonight. They are after the vaseline-soaked gauze that’s stuffed in my wounds. The orderly used a flit gun on them, and that’s not doing the trick, they tried a can of ether. The ether got on a tender spot, so I don’t know which is worse, the ants or the cure. Say, I’d like to eat! The chocolate is still holding out, but we sure have to seal the cans up to keep the ants out.