Dave was forced to grin in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Good old Freddy Farmer. He was running true to form. His own neck was very, very far from being safe, and maybe he wouldn't even have a neck by this time tomorrow. Yet he wasn't giving that little item a single thought. Somebody else's life was in jeopardy, and that's all that concerned him at the moment. Help the other fellow, and then give a thought to himself ... maybe.
"Okay, okay!" Dave finally shouted and heeled the plane around on wingtip. "Did I say, no? Can't a guy argue, huh? But if we find out that they just thought they were being forced down then you're getting out and walking home, my little man. So here we go. And let's see you give those cat's eyes of yours a really good workout this time!"
A little over an hour later Dave dug knuckles into his tired, aching eyes, and once more looked down over the side of the Bristol Taurus powered Fairey Albacore, of the Singapore Fighter Command, at the seemingly endless expanse of the South China Sea. The burning rays of the brass ball, that was the sun hanging in the sky above, beat downward to turn the rolling swells into one great sheet of shimmering blue-green glass. To spot anything down there was like trying to spot a fly walking across the face of the sun, itself.
"Any luck, pal?" he called back over his shoulder to Freddy Farmer in the gunner's pit.
"No! And I think I'm going blind!" the English youth groaned. "That courier plane must have crashed in and sunk like a rock at once. This is the exact spot where they reported going down, but I swear there's nothing down there but water."
"And you're only looking at the top of it!" Dave grunted. "I wonder if we should chance calling Singapore Base, and...."
Dave cut himself off short and jerked his head around to the east. Perhaps it was just his imagination playing him tricks, but he could have sworn that he'd caught a strange flash of light out the corner of his eye that was more than just the rays of the burning sun bouncing up off the water. For a full minute, though, he peered intently at a point on the shimmering blue surface a good fifteen miles off his right wings. Then as he made a grimace of disappointment, and was about to turn his head front, he spotted it again. It was the sun's reflection on something that rose up out of the water and promptly fell back out of sight again.
"Hey, Eagle Eyes!" he called to Freddy Farmer and pointed a finger. "Take a look over there and down. Do you see what I see? And, if so, what in heck is it?"
It was several seconds before the English youth spoke, but when he did his voice trembled with excitement.
"That's the wing of a wrecked plane, Dave!" he cried. "Most of it's submerged ... maybe it's still attached to the plane ... but the swells are making it poke up out of water. It.... Dave! It has the R.A.F. bullseye on it. Must be the courier plane we've been hunting. Get us over there fast, Dave!"