CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CATAMARAN
Chick Enders and Curly Levitt pulled Barry onto their raft.
“Great guns, Skipper!” the little bombardier exclaimed. “I never was so glad to see anything as I was to spot your headgear poking up out of that swell!”
“Chick cut our line just in time,” Curly remarked, “or the ship’s plunge would have spilled us into the pond, too. And, speaking of water, I hope we find a spring on that island when we reach it tonight. Nobody ever thought to bring along anything to drink, unless Mickey Rourke has a canteen in that bundle of his.”
“I have not!” the little gunner retorted. “Many a flier has been set adrift without water and lived to tell the tale. The small matter of a drink did not worry me. But the night before we took off from the flat-top I had a dream of floatin’ helpless on a rubber doughnut while the bloody Japs strafed me from the air. So I brought along a waterproofed tommy-gun, just in case me dream came true! Ye can laugh at me if yez feel like it, gintlemen.”
“Who wants to laugh?” Curly Levitt cried. “After this I’ll trade all my day dreams for one of your nightmares, Mickey.”
“We’re the nitwits not to think of something like that!” Barry Blake confessed. “Did you by any chance remember to put some oil and cotton waste in the same package? Our pistols could stand a cleaning now, before the salt water makes them useless.”
Rourke pulled the little oilskin-wrapped container from his bundle and handed it to Barry.