"The signal flare, Dave!" Freddy Farmer roared at the top of his voice. "Serrangi didn't lie to us! There is somebody down there."
"I knew it all the time, I did!" Dave cracked back, as his heart looped in his chest with joy. "But, I still want to know where in heck a field could be down there. It's.... Holy smoke! Am I seeing things, or ... or what?"
Dave stuttered out the rest as he stared in dumbfounded amazement down toward earth. An airplane had suddenly appeared before his very eyes. It was a swift Japanese Nakajima 96 single seater. A Land of the Rising Sun copy of the American Boeing F4B. But the cockeyed point was that the craft, with its red and white rising sun markings and all, had seemingly popped right out of a tree top. One instant Dave had been staring at the top of the lush jungle stretch below him, and in the next he was looking at a Jap plane zooming up toward him at top climbing speed. It was incredible, it was nuts, and it was all cockeyed. But, nevertheless, it was fact. The Jap plane was coming up like a rocket off on a holiday.
"Dave! I'm not crazy, am I?" came Freddy Farmer's tight voice. "That is a Jap plane, isn't it?"
"Unless we're both crazy!" Dave replied and watched the Jap pilot swing out wide of them, and then curve back in toward their right wings. "But where in thunder he came from, don't ask, pal, don't ask! Jumping Messerschmitts! Will we have something to tell the boys ... if we ever get back!"
"You could have left off that last bit," Freddy grunted. "I don't want to even think about that. There! The lad is signalling, Dave! He's motioning for us to swing in behind him, and follow him down."
"Yeah!" Dave said with a nod. "This time I see it with my own eyes. That dirty brown rat! Boy, is it a temptation, Freddy!"
"What do you mean?" the English born R.A.F. ace demanded.
"That Jap," Dave said and went through the motion of depressing the electric trigger button on the stick. "Could I shoot the buck teeth out of him from here! And with both eyes shut, too! I...."
"Dave, don't be mad!" Freddy cried in alarm. "That would be a fine mess."