"That"s right!" Freddy Farmer cried. "That"s the old International Morse code done with a flag. To the right is a dot, and to the left is a dash.
And straight down in front means the end of a word. Now, where"s my blasted pencil, and I"ll put it down. There he put it down in front three times! That means the end of the message. If he"ll only repeat it, I think I can get it."
The man standing on the tiny raft seemed to wait a moment or two, as though he were striving to rally his waning strength for another effort.
Then he started waving his shirt again. It was a short message, and both boys got it without bothering to jot down each letter. The message signaled was:
FLY OVER LOW PLEASE, IMPORTANT
"What do you make of that, Freddy?" Dawson asked, and dipped the Vultee"s nose even more. "Does he think we"re a rescue plane that"s come to drop food and water, poor devil?"
"I don"t know," the English youth replied. "Possibly. Or maybe there"s something on the raft he wants us to see. The only thing to do is to go down and find out. I say! I"ve just remembered! I have some chocolate, Dave. I"ll tie it up in my handkerchief and try to drop it right onto the raft, if you get us down low enough. But, for heaven"s sake, don"t hit the raft, or the water!"
"Aw gee!" Dawson grated at him. "And that"s just what I was planning to do, too! You spoil all my fun, you dope! Act your age, will you?"
"Just don"t take us down too low," Freddy Farmer reminded him evenly.
Dawson opened his mouth to make a fitting retort. Instead he shrugged, let Freddy"s remark slide, and concentrated on getting the Vultee down as low as he possibly could. When he had reached an alt.i.tude of some ten or fifteen feet, he throttled the Wright Cyclone until it was just a shade on the good side of stalling. He guided it toward the tiny life raft. The shirt-waver had ceased his signaling and was crouching down on the raft as though he were afraid Dawson was going to bounce the Vultee"s belly off the top of his hatless head.
"So you"re also silly enough to think I"ll come too close?" Dawson growled, as he experienced a moment of annoyance. "Well, relax, fellow!
Just relax, and let"s have a look at the meaning of that message. Okay, Freddy! Get set to drop that chocolate!"
As he spoke, he impulsively started to jerk his head around. Some inner warning cut short his effort, and it was that inner warning that unquestionably saved his life, and Freddy Farmer"s life, too. In other words, just as he was about to turn his head for a look at Young Farmer, all four men on the raft sprang to crouching positions. Each gripped a sub-machine gun in his hands and blazed away at the coasting Vultee!
True, Dawson"s sudden inner warning had helped, but it was his instinctive reaction to sudden danger that actually saved his life and Freddy"s. In less time than it takes to bat an eyelash, he had smashed the throttle wide open with one hand and was hauling the Vultee around in a wing tip water-kissing turn with the other. Had he started to climb at that same time, the Grim Reaper still might have claimed them both, because the four crouching figures on the raft had automatically pointed their machine guns skyward.
As it happened, though, Dawson held the Vultee in a tight turn until its tail was toward the raft. Then he quickly flattened out, shot forward for a split second, and banked the Vultee over on its left wing tip. He banked it to the right wing tip and hauled the craft up in a twisting power zoom toward the sun-filled heavens. Only when he was well out of range and had leveled off did he let the clamped air out of his lungs and shake the cold beads of sweat from his forehead.
"Suffering rattlesnakes, Freddy!" he choked out. "Was that a nightmare, or did it happen? Those b.u.ms let fly at us, Freddy! All four of them!"
There was no answer from young Farmer, and in the length of time it took Dawson to twist around in the seat, he seemed to die a thousand deaths.
His fears were unfounded, however. Freddy Farmer was very much alive. No bullet had snuffed out his life, though the left side of his gla.s.s hatch was covered with a million tiny cracks. Amazement and utter bewilderment were all that was wrong with the British-born air ace. He sat rigid in his seat, staring at Dawson as though he had never seen him before in his life. His face was white under his sun-and-wind bronze, and his mouth hung open as though he had intended to yell, but had been shocked into forgetting all about it.
"Hey, Freddy, snap out of it!" Dawson shouted, and rocked the Vultee violently.
The English youth stared blankly for a second longer. Suddenly he blinked, and his whole body shook like a leaf. The breath came from between his lips in a whistle that Dawson could almost hear above the roar of the Vultee"s Cyclone.
"The blighters! The low-down dirty beggars! They shot at us; They--they--" Young Farmer choked on his words, and his eyes opened still wider in amazement.
It took a half second or so for Dawson to realize that Freddy was looking at something forward and downward. Automatically, he twisted around front and looked down. He let out a bellow of surprise. Down on the Caribbean was a n.a.z.i U-boat breaking surface not over fifty yards from the floating life raft. Unable to move a muscle, he stared as the conning-tower hatch opened and a couple of men spilled out onto the wet deck and hurried toward the bow. The undersea killer veered over toward the floating raft.
What he saw made Dave fighting mad. He shook with anger, and a red film seemed to slide over his eyes.
"So?" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "So it"s like that, huh?"
It was just like that. No sooner had the words left Dawson"s lips than the U-boat"s bow gun belched flame, and the sky a hundred yards or so off the Vultee"s right wing tip seemed to explode in a roar of sound and a great puff of oily black smoke. An instant later, another bit of sky seemed to explode. This time the puff of oily black smoke was high above the Vultee. This was because Dawson had turned the nose of the plane downward and was thundering straight at the U-boat at almost rocket speed.
"So you want to play, do you?" He shouted the crazy words. "Well, so do we! And how! Here, catch, you tramps!"
The Vultee"s wing guns punctuated his words with a chattering blast of sound that made the aircraft tremble violently. Straight lines of silver tracers cut down at the two men crouched behind the guard of the U-boat"s bow gun. They would have done better had they dived overboard and down under the U-boat"s keel. The bullets from the Vultee"s wing guns found them and smashed them to the steel deck. Tapping rudder a bit, Dawson veered the plane"s nose a shade to the right and blazed away at the open conning tower hatch. A man crawling up out of it was flung head over heels clear of the U-boat"s side and down into the water as though by some invisible giant.
By then the Vultee"s prop was about ready to chew into the conning tower itself, and Dawson had to haul the nose up and go curving around and away. That maneuver permitted Freddy Farmer to go into action with his rear guns. As Dave jerked his head around for a split second, he saw the four men on the raft trying to scramble up to the U-boat"s wet deck, only to go toppling over backwards like tenpins and disappear beneath the surface of the water.
"There, you rotten beggars, you"ll not do that again!" the English youth"s voice rang loud in Dawson"s inter-com phones. "Not by half, you won"t!"
"The sub"s crash diving, Freddy!" Dawson yelled as he saw the hatch close and the nose of the U-boat slip down under water. "Oh, gosh! If we only had a depth charge or two! Oh, how I hate to let that snake get away!"
As the wishful words spilled off his lips, he was in the act of doing what little he could. That was wheeling around and down for another run over the crash-diving U-boat, and letting fly with all his guns at the top half of the submerging craft. He might possibly hit some part that would check the dive and force the U-boat back to the surface. That was a slim, slim hope, and it died completely as the entire craft slid out of sight, leaving behind an empty life raft and seven bodies.
With a groan Dave cut his fire, and hauled the Vultee up out of its dive and onto even keel. He stared down at the floating bodies, gulped, shuddered slightly, and drew a hand across his goggles, as though that would wipe away the scene below and make everything as it had been before. It didn"t, of course, but when he took another look downward he found it hard to believe that Death had been whispering so close. Then he snapped out of his trance.
"Get the nearest patrol base on the radio, Freddy, and report that U-boat"s position!" he spoke into his inter-com mike. "There"s just a chance that it may have to surface soon, and somebody else can nail it."
"Right-o!" Freddy Farmer called back. "But, gosh, I would love to be that somebody else! Or--or has this just been a crazy dream, Dave? It doesn"t make sense! Those were blasted n.a.z.is on the life raft.
Like--like a confounded decoy, or something. I--"
"_Decoy?_" Dave Dawson gasped, and sat up straight in the pit. "Holy smoke! Do you suppose so? Sure, you must be right. Look, Freddy! Report that U-boat"s last position. Then we"ll get out of here, but fast!
Something is kind of screwy, and I don"t like it, but plenty I don"t."
As Dawson nosed the Vultee around and onto its course for San Fernando on British-owned Trinidad, he impulsively lifted his free hand to his chest and pressed it against the two sealed envelopes and the little vial of acid that were in his inside tunic pocket.
CHAPTER SIX
_Changed Orders_
The U. S. Army Air Transport Command at San Fernando comprised the entire south side of the Trinidad air base. Dawson spotted the American flag atop the Administration Building from the air. After his recent experience, a great sense of relief and joy flooded through him at the sight of Old Glory waving proudly in the breeze. And not only that, but the sight of Old Glory meant also that this crazy aerial messenger-boy mission was one-half completed. Three more stops and they would be at Natal. There they would meet Colonel Welsh and, please, please, G.o.d, find out what in thunder this secret sealed-envelope business was all about.
"And if he doesn"t tell me," Dawson muttered as he let down the Vultee"s wheels and nosed the craft earthward, "it"s going to be the end of a beautiful friendship as far as I"m concerned. Right! He"s got to give us a tiny inkling, at least or--or--Well, I sure hope he does, anyway."
"So do I, old chap!" he heard Freddy Farmer echo his hope. "I also want to see his face when we tell him what we have to tell. You haven"t any new ideas, have you, Dave?"
"Dawson shook his head. During the remainder of the flight to this next stop, both had taken the U-boat experience apart and had carefully examined it piece by piece. It was all to no avail, in regard to reaching any definite conclusion. True, the logical conclusion was that the life raft had served as a decoy to bring them down so low that its occupants could shoot them into the water. When that had failed, the lurking U-boat had surfaced to try its luck with its bow anti-aircraft gun. If that was the correct conclusion, it made everything even more screwy. Colonel Welsh was the only man living who knew why they were making this crazy flight. He had told them so. How could a n.a.z.i U-boat at sea learn the secret they shared with Colonel Welsh? And--
"Gosh!" Dawson gasped. "But no! Heck, no! That would be even screwier!"
"What, Dave?" Freddy asked. "You do have a new idea?"
"Not exactly," Dawson replied. "Just a chilling thought. Do you suppose those birds on that raft were _really_ torpedo survivors, and in their crazed state took us for a n.a.z.i plane and--"
"What utter rot, Dave!" Freddy Farmer interrupted. "Don"t be silly, old thing! Of course not! Would four torpedo survivors bother to take four sub-machine guns onto a life raft with them? Certainly not! Come out of it, Dave! They were n.a.z.is, sure enough. They were from that U-boat, too, and set adrift to have a go at us."
"But how--" Dawson began and cut himself off short. "Oh, skip it! If I let myself think any more about the crazy business, I"ll forget what I"m doing and crack us up."
"Then for goodness" sakes don"t think of it!" Freddy Farmer cried in alarm. "I fancy I"ve had excitement enough for the rest of this day! So forget things and keep your eye on that field down there."
Dawson did just that, and a couple of minutes later he set the Vultee down light as a feather and taxied it over toward the Administration Building. He braked to a stop eventually, unsnapped his safety and parachute harness, and climbed stiff-legged down onto the ground. Freddy Farmer joined him, and they were just starting to get some of the flight stiffness out of their legs when a major came out of the Administration Building and walked over to them.