Rosy O’Grady’s crew was jubilant when they heard the order. The fog, the bugs, the everlasting sticky heat of Mau River made idleness a torture. That night they crawled under their mosquito bars and fell sound asleep without the usual “bull session” of complaints.
The fog had lifted a little when they finished their pre-dawn breakfast and headed for the runway. Rosy’s four engines were whooping it up as the greaseballs warmed them.
“That’s real music!” Fred Marmon shouted to Barry. “If they run as sweetly as that today, no storm’s going to worry us.”
“She’s bombed up. I saw to that last night,” said Chick Enders at Barry’s elbow. “They’re all half-ton babies. If we should spot a Jap convoy, we’ll be set to slam it.”
“If!” repeated Curly Levitt, the navigator. “It’s a pretty big ‘if,’ even granting that there is a convoy at sea. There won’t be many holes in this cloud ceiling, I’m afraid....”
His voice faded out beneath the thunder of five thousand horses, as Rosy O’Grady strained at her braked wheels. The engine roar died down suddenly, a moment later, and the mechanics slid out of the hatch. The sergeant in charge made a circle with his thumb and finger, indicating “Okay!” Barry Blake nodded, and plunged into Rosy’s dim interior.
The runway was a vaguely lighter strip down the center of the field as they took off. It dropped away, as lightly as a streak of fog. Hap Newton touched the lever that raised the wheels. Suddenly the blanketing mist closed them in completely.
For the first hour Barry flew by instruments. Then, just off the western tip of New Britain, the air about them cleared. No loom of Arabia ever wove such gorgeous colors as the rising sun now spread over the cloud rug below Rosy’s broad wings. Among deep blue shadows the rolling vapors gleamed with gold and pink.
In the bomber’s transparent nose, Chick Enders gazed at the scene, open-mouthed.
“Fellows,” he said in a voice of wonder. “That’s a sight worth any flier’s life. It’s Heaven’s art work, fresh from the hand of God!”