“No wonder the Nip survivors cleared out!” Curly Levitt remarked. “There aren’t enough usable parts in the whole line-up to build half a plane, so far as I can see. Let’s cut a mast for the catamaran, and get back to the beach, skipper.”
Barry Blake did not move. Deep in thought, he stood staring at the nearest bomber, which leaned crazily on one wheel and one wing tip.
The plane’s left aileron dangled loosely. Its tail fin was smashed, and one of the elevators was gone completely. Great holes showed in the fuselage. The greenhouse was broken in. Yet something about the wreck appeared to fascinate the young pilot.
“Curly,” he said soberly, “you’ve given me an idea. We can build a plane with these parts, if the Japs will give us time. A few shell holes are nothing if the crate will fly. You fellows beat it back to the beach and bring the others here. We’ll rig up sleeping quarters for tonight and begin work at crack of dawn.... Fred, you stay here with me. We’ll start looking these planes over now, by moonlight. It will save time.”
If the others had doubts that Barry’s scheme would work, they failed to mention them. The idea of flying home appealed so powerfully to their minds that they would have backed a one-in-twenty chance of success. They headed for the creek trail in high spirits.
When they returned, an hour later, Barry had good news to tell the whole company. He and Fred had found two Mitsubishi bombers with engines apparently unhurt and wings not too badly damaged, though the tail assemblies, fuselages and undercarriages were in sad shape. A greater surprise was a two-place Kawasaki fighter. Its greenhouse and rear fuselage were full of holes, but its working parts were undamaged.
“Hap, you can take off first in that Kawasaki with the two ladies,” Barry told his co-pilot. “The rest of us can rebuild one of the bombers and follow you in a day or two. Finding that fighter plane is a better break than anything we’ve had yet.”
“Humph!” snorted the bigger man. “It might be—if you could find somebody else to fly it. But even then I have a hunch the girls would make trouble. Claire wouldn’t leave without her father, and Dora wouldn’t leave without Claire. Of course neither Chick nor Curly nor I would leave without you, and nobody else except Crayle knows enough to handle a plane; and so—”
“Oh, drive it in the hangar, will you, Hap!” Barry said with a wry grin. “I know when I’m licked. We’ll all have to wait till one of the Mitsus is fixed, I suppose—and just hope that the Japs won’t be back before we get off. Come on—let’s see what sort of chow and sleeping equipment the Japs have left us.”
In the Jap officers’ wrecked quarters they discovered a flashlight, and with its help located other things. There were enough iron cot beds and fairly clean bedding to supply all the white members of the party. Best of all, there was plenty of mosquito netting.