Tony was still unconscious when they carried him to the plane’s cockpit. His wound had evidently been made by a piece of flak that had ripped through his thigh like a dull knife. The arteries were bleeding slowly despite the tourniquet.
With small silver clips from the first-aid kit, Barry managed to close the severed blood vessels. He dusted a handful of sulfanilamide powder into the wound, removed the tourniquet, and used most of the kit’s gauze in a snug bandage.
Straightening up, he pointed to the windows in the nose and overhead.
“Open up and give him some fresh air,” he directed. “The minute Tony comes to, we’ll make him swallow some salt tablets and sulfadiazine, with all the water he can drink. That’s all we can do.... Chick, you and Soapy will stay with him now, while the rest of us look over the island. We’ll be back before dark if we don’t run into any Japs.”
“Okay, Skipper—we’ll hold the fort,” Chick answered. “If you should meet trouble near by we can cover your retreat with Rosy’s machine guns. Maybe you’d better demount one of them and take it along for an emergency.”
“Our pistols and the tommy-gun will be enough,” Barry said, as he left the cockpit. “Those fifty-caliber babies are too heavy to carry far, or to use without a tripod. See you soon, fellows.”
A five hour search of the island revealed no human inhabitant. On the farther side from their plane the Fortress men found the burned remnants of a native village and a few unburied corpses. The Jap butchers had evidently come and gone a few weeks before.
Barry and Hap downed a half-wild pig with their pistols. On their return to the Fortress, they frightened a number of scrawny island chickens that flew squawking into the jungle. It was plain that they need not starve, Fred Marmon remarked, even if escape from the island should be delayed for a month.
“I’ve no idea of waiting that long, Fred,” Barry laughed. “As soon as it’s dark, we’ll radio the base to send a supply ship here. With a runway of steel mats on the beach we should have no trouble in taking off. That is, if the Nips don’t spot us!”
Reaching the plane they found Tony Romani conscious again. He had been swallowing salt and water in quantity to make up for his loss of blood. Despite the pain of his wound he greeted his friends with a plucky grin.