“Stay back!” he warned hysterically. “You can’t keep me here on the ground while they’re dropping bombs on us. I’ll kill you if you come another step.... You, Nanu—walk that propeller around once again, or I’ll kill you, too. Turn it, you fool!”
Nanu, sweating with the pain of his injured leg, grasped the Kawasaki’s propeller and leaned his weight on it. Off balance, he slipped to his knees. The fall probably saved his life, for at that moment the engine coughed into life.
Crayle did not wait for the engine to warm up.... Scarcely had Nanu dragged himself out of the way of the wheels when they rolled forward. The Kawasaki rushed down the runway trailing a cloud of dust. Her tail came up. Then, just as she reached the end of the strip something went wrong.
Either the plane had not gathered sufficient speed, or Crayle failed to ease back on the stick soon enough. Instead of rising, the wheels struck the far edge of the unfilled bomb crater. The Kawasaki went end over end, with a rending crash.
Fire burst from the center section. The whole plane exploded in a giant bloom of flame. Above it the Jap bombers zoomed, and spiralled upward to join their formation. The Kawasaki’s futile attempt to take off had at least convinced them that the field was not in enemy hands.
Barry turned around to find Dora and Claire Barrows bandaging Nanu’s re-opened wound. They appeared far more concerned over the suffering native boy than about Glenn Crayle’s flaming death.
“How soon do you think we can get Nanu to a hospital, Barry?” the girl missionary queried anxiously. “This new loss of blood is likely to bring on a fever, and we haven’t a thing to treat it with.”
The young skipper looked toward the Kawasaki’s wreckage, blazing on the other side of the last bomb crater.
“We’ll have that hole filled before midnight, Dora,” he said wearily. “It will have to be Glenn Crayle’s grave. When the earth is smoothed down and the burned plane is hauled aside, there should be enough runway for the bomber. We’ll take off at dawn, and be over Port Darwin in two hours—if we’re not intercepted.”
At breakfast time the next morning an excited radio officer telephoned the O.C. at Port Darwin airfield.