For a brief instant or two he heard nothing but the hum of the set warming up, and a little blast of static. And then he almost jumped out of the pit with surprise as he clearly heard the voice of the huge j.a.p who had been their "escort" back on the enemy carrier.
"Turn around and come with us, please!" came the astonishing demand.
"Turn around at once, and return with us, please, or we will shoot you down into the water. I am warning you. You cannot escape. Turn around, and come back with us at once, please!"
Dawson turned around, right enough. His head, and _not_ the plane. He looked at Freddy, wide-eyed.
"Well, what do you know!" he cried. "And what a hope that guy has. You heard him, Freddy?"
The English youth nodded, and yanked his own headphones off.
"Jolly well right, I heard the beggar!" he cried angrily. "And here"s our answer to him. Get set, Dave!"
As Freddy shouted the last he grabbed his rear guns and fired a defiant burst straight over the wings of the Zero. He could very easily have slammed that burst straight into the Zero, but that would have been j.a.p stuff, and he couldn"t bring himself to sink that low, regardless of the seriousness of the situation.
"There"s your answer, you dirty blighter!" he howled as the j.a.p pilot almost turned his plane inside out in a frantic effort to get away.
"There"s your answer, blast you!"
The English youth shouted more things, but Dawson didn"t wait to listen and admire. He had twisted back front and was sticking the MK-11 through a vicious half-roll to throw off the aim of the two Zero pilots behind flying wingtip formation. And it was the perfect maneuver in such a case, too. He did throw the two pilots off and caused them to open fire a split second too late so that tracers from their guns cleared the top of the twisting MK-11 by several feet.
"Catch them Freddy, catch them, kid!" Dawson bellowed as he hauled the wing screaming MK-11 up out of its mad dive. "Nail one of the tramps, and make it that much less uneven, kid!"
Maybe the English youth heard, and maybe he didn"t. Maybe he had that idea all along. At any rate, his guns hammered out their chattering note, and Dawson saw one of the Zeros seem to stagger and stumble in the air. By then he had brought the MK-11 around and up so that he could bring his own guns to bear. He stabbed the electric trigger b.u.t.ton, and a great shout of joy burst from his lips as the staggering Zero suddenly became a ball of fire that hung motionless in midair for a split second and then fell down into the water, leaving behind a trail of oily black smoke.
Neither Dave, nor Freddy Farmer, however, took time out to watch the Zero flame downward to its finish. They still had a two to one fight on their hands, _and_ against two planes that could fly rings around their MK-11. They had been lucky and had caught one of the j.a.ps with his "flaps down," so to speak, but the other two were not going to be so easy. As a matter of fact, it seemed to Dawson that he had hardly slammed the death burst into that first j.a.p before one of the others was wheeling in at him broadside, despite the withering fire from Freddy Farmer"s guns. The MK-11 shook and trembled as it was. .h.i.t in a dozen different places. And suddenly Dawson felt as though he had been clipped in the chest by the tip of a spinning prop. Every bit of air was knocked out of his lungs, and black and red spots began to whirl and dance around before his eyes. Then, suddenly, the spots disappeared, and save for a dull ache in his chest he was all right again.
All right? He laughed harshly as that thought flashed through his brain.
All right? Sure, except for the minor detail that the two j.a.p Zero pilots were maneuvering about to "box" the MK-11 in a deadly and fatal cross-fire. Yes, sure, he was all okay save for that minor little detail.
"Give it to them, Dave! Don"t let the blighters get away with it! Fly their confounded wings off, blast them!"
The words had come from Freddy"s lips, but as far as Dave Dawson was concerned they were just a waste of breath. He was well aware of the two Zeros closing in for a cross-fire attack. And he was well aware of the fact that he"d have to just about fly the wings off the Zeros in order to skip free of this air trap. As a matter of fact, the only thing he could possibly do was to play a long shot; to take a one in a million chance, and pray as he had never before prayed in his life. Take a long shot chance, and pray.
"Hold tight, Freddy!" he shouted. "I"m going to twist this baby plenty.
I--"
He cut off the rest of what he was shouting because his chest was filled with sharp pains again, and his lungs felt as though they were breathing liquid fire. It suddenly seemed to take every ounce of his strength to move the control stick, and to kick on rudder. But somehow he managed it, and he sent the MK-11 curving upward and around toward the Zero on his left. And at the same time Freddy Farmer let fly with his guns at the Zero on the right. Dawson"s j.a.p saw him coming and, rather than chance the full fury of the Yank"s fire, he pulled off and upward. In that same split second Dawson steeled himself to the effort, slammed the stick over, booted opposite rudder and brought the MK-11 around and up in the opposite direction. In other words he cut off his expected attack on the first Zero to cut in up at the Zero on the other side. As a result of that double maneuver, which was carried through with split-second accuracy, he not only broke up the two Zero plane attack, but forced each j.a.p pilot to careen upward and away.
Too late the two j.a.ps realized what was going to happen. Instead of both charging straight in on the MK-11, they both were streaking straight at one another! Both j.a.ps saw that a midair crash was about to take place, and both frantically tried to swerve off into the clear. And perhaps they might have succeeded if it hadn"t been for the deadly aim of Freddy Farmer. The English youth"s guns snarled out their song, and one of the j.a.p pilots was stone dead before he could turn off into the clear. And his failure to do so spilled the beans for the other j.a.p. He couldn"t check his plane in time, and he flew straight into the other faltering Zero.
To Dawson"s ears, and to Freddy Farmer"s, came the loud crashing sound as the two high speed planes met about three hundred feet above the MK-11. And then the whole sky seemed to be filled with seething flame.
Dawson cried out in impulsive alarm and slammed the nose of his two-seater downward. Glancing back up over his shoulder, he saw the ma.s.s of exploding flame that enveloped the two Zeros. Then there was even a louder explosion, and the air was filled with falling slivers of flame.
Choking and gasping from the effort it caused him, Dawson hauled the MK-11 out of its mad dive at about wave crest height and flew, level while red and black dots danced around before his eyes again, and dull, throbbing pain flowed through his chest.
"Nice, Dave!" he heard Freddy Farmer calling to him. "That was the most perfect maneuver I ever saw. Man! Did you fool those two beggars. It was absolutely wonderful."
"I"ll just take half the credit, kid!" Dawson forced himself to call back. "But for that sweet shooting of yours the stunt might not have worked. And--Oh, for gosh sakes!"
Dave gasped out the last as he happened to glance at the instrument panel. One of the bursts of bullets from one of the Zeros had made a shambles of the instrument board. And the compa.s.s in particular was just a heap of junk. With the compa.s.s gone they would have to depend entirely upon celestial navigation. In other words, any hope they might have of continuing on to find Admiral Jackson"s task force was completely gone.
Because of the milling around in the fight they had, of course, lost all track of their exact position. And they would have to know their position exactly in order to set a true course for the area where they believed the Yank task force to be. And without the aid of the compa.s.s they wouldn"t be able to hold to a true course, even if they could plot one. And so there was but one thing to do. They at least could tell the direction of south. And somewhere south of them was New Guinea with the Yank-held base at Port Morseby. So south it had to be, and in no other direction.
"Blast their good shooting!" Dave heard Freddy"s voice close behind him, and knew that the English youth was looking at what had happened to the compa.s.s. "Well, south it is then, Dave. It"ll be dark in no time, now.
And at least we can tell true south from the stars. But, after all, we"re blasted lucky. So I guess we can"t kick much, what?"
Dawson nodded, and dragged air into his lungs. The pain of it caused him to wince slightly, silently. But he managed to speak the words.
"Go south, I always say," he grunted. "But keep the old fingers crossed, Freddy. And don"t forget the praying, either. We haven"t got the j.a.ps to worry about any more, thank G.o.d. But we have got an awful lot of ocean to consider. And--yeah--a plane that maybe won"t quite make it.
"Rot, Dave!" Freddy snapped at him. "You"re talking like an old woman.
Come off it. We"ll make it, you"ll see. Blast it, Dave, we"ve just got to!"
"Check, kid, check!" Dawson mumbled. "We"ve just got to make it, and how!"
And with a half-nod for emphasis he unconsciously put his free hand to his throbbing chest.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
_Flight"s End_
Darkness, and more darkness, and even more darkness. Constantly, forever, and eternally. And with it all the monotonous, nerve-pounding drone of the engine in the nose of the Mitsubishi. Ten million times it was all Dawson could do to refrain from screaming his head off, and diving right out of the plane into the black night air. It was the same minute after minute, and hour after hour. It was almost more than Dawson, in his condition, could bear. And as the night dragged on and on, tiny little fears began to mount up in the Yank air ace.
It had been but a few minutes after the three to one air sc.r.a.p when the Southwest Pacific night had arrived with a swoop and a rush, and closed in on all sides. However, as though the G.o.ds were favoring those two youths a little, there were no clouds in the night sky. Above and stretching far off to all the horizons was a solid canopy of glittering and winking stars. And so it had been but a simple matter to plot a course south by the stars, allowing for a slight correction either way.
And so they had headed south at cruising throttle, and with a solemn, fervent prayer in their hearts that after the seven hours of darkness in that part of the world would come dawn and the definite knowledge that they were within sight of the New Guinea coast. Both realized that then would begin the most difficult part of the long flight. Though MacArthur"s troops and planes were hammering hard at the j.a.ps, the devils from the Land of the Rising Sun still held most of New Guinea.
And, frankly speaking, the two youths could expect more trouble before they sat down on the Yank-held base at Port Moresby.
However, they had won out so far, and against great odds, so there was more than a little joy in their hearts as they went winging south. For a long time they chatted back and forth about this and that for no other reason than the pleasure of companionship. Eventually, though, they ran out of words, and save for a short sentence now and then they both remained silent.
As far as Dawson was concerned, that was perfectly okay. His chest was on fire, and it hurt him to talk. Also, there were little alarming spells of giddiness that came to him every now and then. He didn"t dare say anything to Freddy, because that would add just one more worry to the English youth"s stock. So he kept his mouth shut, clamped down hard on the knife-like pains in his chest, and flew doggedly southward, praying for dawn as he had never prayed in his whole life before.
But the darkness dragged on and on until Dawson was ready to despair of ever seeing a dawn again. A numbness had settled in his left shoulder, except when he moved it. And when he did by accident, he had to shut his teeth tight to stop from crying out from the pain. A cold clammy sweat formed on his forehead, and the beads kept continually trickling down into his eyes to blur his vision, and caused him to imagine he saw all kinds of crazy things that didn"t exist at all a split second after he had brushed the sweat from his eyes. Particularly he was seeing the lights of ships below. Or, at least, certain he was seeing them until he looked again. Of course, every time he "saw" the lights he knew perfectly well that any boat in that part of the Southwest Pacific, Yank or j.a.p, most certainly wouldn"t be showing so much as a speck of light at night. However, what he imagined seemed so real that he was constantly sitting up straight and peering down over the right wing or the left.
If dawn would _only_ come! If only there would come a thin pale line of light in the east to give him hope, if nothing else! If--
"I say, old chap!" Freddy Farmer"s voice cut into his thoughts, and prayers. "Would you mind raising the shade and letting in a bit of light, what? I"m getting blasted fed up with this darkness. I swear we"ve had a solid week of it. I really do."
"Me, too, pal," Dawson replied, and struggled to keep his suffering out of his voice. "It almost seems as if somebody blew out the doggoned sun.
Boy, if--Hold it! Am I right, or am I right, Freddy? Could that be the first grey streak there to the east, huh?"
"It not only could be, but it is!" the English-born air ace shouted happily. "Praise be to Allah! In a few moments now we should be able to get a look at where we are. I bet you anything you like that the New Guinea coast is just ahead of us, and that we"ll see it soon."
"No bet!" Dave called back. "That"s one bet I wouldn"t want to win. And how, I wouldn"t want to win it!"
As Dawson spoke the last a sudden thought came to him, and he caught his breath. The thought was: What if they didn"t sight land within an hour or less after dawn? Supposing their drift during the night hours had been double or even triple what they had allowed for, and they were actually lost somewhere above the broad expanse of the Southwest Pacific? What if they were lost, and remained lost until the engine in the nose sucked up the last drop of high test, and then quit cold? There was a rubber raft in the MK-11, but Dawson knew in his heart that he would never survive a single day drifting helplessly on the sun-flooded waters. Yesterday, sure, or the day before--but not now. Not during this day that was now dawning. And so, please, G.o.d! Please!
The silent prayer remained on Dawson"s lips as he watched the pale line of light low down in the east grow broader and brighter, until, as though invisible doors in the heavens had been flung open, the light of the new day came rushing westward, driving the shadows of night on ahead of it. In a matter of less than fifteen minutes the two youths had perfect visibility in all four directions. First, though, they peered southward. And to Dawson it was like receiving a mule"s kick in the stomach. Nothing but dawn-tinted water as far as the eye could see. Not a sign of land. Not a sign of anything but water; endless rolling swells of it. A great sadness, a great bitterness welled up in him until he could hardly breathe. And there was the sting of hot tears at the backs of his eyeb.a.l.l.s.