But then Scoot’s plane wobbled, tipped over, and went spiraling down to the sea in a slow spin. The pursuit plane circled above and watched. About fifty feet above the water, the seaplane lurched a little, seemed to come out of its spin. The pursuit plane pilot looked puzzled, but he smiled again as he saw the plane stall, slip back and hit the sea, tail first.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ATTACK!
It was the cold water that brought Scoot to his senses, cold water creeping up over his chest. When he felt it, he scrambled forward, but fell back in his seat at once. The arm he had reached out to pull himself up with would not work. It hung limp at his side. He glanced down and saw blood streaming from it.
“Got to do something about that!” he muttered dazedly. “Anyway, it worked. He thought he hit me. I did a nice slow spinning dive. He thought he’d got the pilot and the plane just went out of control, fell into a natural slow spin. And did I keep it slow! He must have thought it was funny when I pulled out of it just over the water, but I didn’t make it look too good. Couldn’t. But I’d slowed her down plenty, then put her into a stall and let her flop back tail first.”
The water was creeping higher as Scoot sat there thinking of what had just happened. Then he shook himself to clear his head, reached up with his good arm and pulled himself forward. The door of the cockpit was already wrenched half off, so Scoot crawled out easily enough. But then he slipped and fell into the water.
The shock revived him a little more so that he grabbed one pontoon. Slowly and painfully he pulled himself up on it. Then he looked up into the sky. Far to the west he saw the dot that was the Jap pursuit ship heading back to its convoy. Scoot smiled weakly.
“He thinks he’s killed an American flier,” he mumbled. “He doesn’t know how hard that is to do.”
The plane was not sinking any further. Its tail and most of the fuselage were covered but the nose and wings and pontoons were above the surface.