Dave Dawson at Casablanca

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"So you're also silly enough to think I'll come too close?" Dawson growled, as he experienced a moment of annoyance. "Well, relax, fellow! Just relax, and let's have a look at the meaning of that message. Okay, Freddy! Get set to drop that chocolate!"

As he spoke, he impulsively started to jerk his head around. Some inner warning cut short his effort, and it was that inner warning that unquestionably saved his life, and Freddy Farmer's life, too. In other words, just as he was about to turn his head for a look at Young Farmer, all four men on the raft sprang to crouching positions. Each gripped a sub-machine gun in his hands and blazed away at the coasting Vultee!

True, Dawson's sudden inner warning had helped, but it was his instinctive reaction to sudden danger that actually saved his life and Freddy's. In less time than it takes to bat an eyelash, he had smashed the throttle wide open with one hand and was hauling the Vultee around in a wing tip water-kissing turn with the other. Had he started to climb at that same time, the Grim Reaper still might have claimed them both, because the four crouching figures on the raft had automatically pointed their machine guns skyward.

As it happened, though, Dawson held the Vultee in a tight turn until its tail was toward the raft. Then he quickly flattened out, shot forward for a split second, and banked the Vultee over on its left wing tip. He banked it to the right wing tip and hauled the craft up in a twisting power zoom toward the sun-filled heavens. Only when he was well out of range and had leveled off did he let the clamped air out of his lungs and shake the cold beads of sweat from his forehead.

"Suffering rattlesnakes, Freddy!" he choked out. "Was that a nightmare, or did it happen? Those bums let fly at us, Freddy! All four of them!"

There was no answer from young Farmer, and in the length of time it took Dawson to twist around in the seat, he seemed to die a thousand deaths. His fears were unfounded, however. Freddy Farmer was very much alive. No bullet had snuffed out his life, though the left side of his glass hatch was covered with a million tiny cracks. Amazement and utter bewilderment were all that was wrong with the British-born air ace. He sat rigid in his seat, staring at Dawson as though he had never seen him before in his life. His face was white under his sun-and-wind bronze, and his mouth hung open as though he had intended to yell, but had been shocked into forgetting all about it.

"Hey, Freddy, snap out of it!" Dawson shouted, and rocked the Vultee violently.

The English youth stared blankly for a second longer. Suddenly he blinked, and his whole body shook like a leaf. The breath came from between his lips in a whistle that Dawson could almost hear above the roar of the Vultee's Cyclone.

"The blighters! The low-down dirty beggars! They shot at us; They—they—" Young Farmer choked on his words, and his eyes opened still wider in amazement.

It took a half second or so for Dawson to realize that Freddy was looking at something forward and downward. Automatically, he twisted around front and looked down. He let out a bellow of surprise. Down on the Caribbean was a Nazi U-boat breaking surface not over fifty yards from the floating life raft. Unable to move a muscle, he stared as the conning-tower hatch opened and a couple of men spilled out onto the wet deck and hurried toward the bow. The undersea killer veered over toward the floating raft.