He cut himself off short as he suddenly heard Group Captain Spencer's voice in his earphones.
"Well, jolly well hurry up, Dawson, and earn some of that pay today!"
Dave sat up straight, and gasped. Then as he heard the chuckle in the earphones he blushed to the roots of his hair and grinned sheepishly. For a second he had clean forgotten that every word he spoke into the radio mike went into the earphones of every other Victory pilot in the air, as well as into the earphones of every man at the operations station aboard the carrier.
"Sorry, sir," he mumbled. "Just talking rot to myself, and not thinking."
"Quite all right, Dawson!" came the cheery reply in his phone. "Get six or seven of these beggars and I'll forgive you. I'll—There they are, Crimson pilots! Dead ahead at twenty-one thousand. Well, well! Quite a mess of them. Spread out and let them go down. Right-o, Crimson pilots. Tally-ho!"
Dave gripped the stick tighter and peered hard upward and ahead at the Mediterranean sky. At first he saw nothing but blue streaked by the brassy glare of the sun. Then suddenly he saw the swarm of dots—tiny dots, like a horde of gnats streaking along high up in the heavens. A moment or so later, however, they ceased to be dots that looked like gnats. The leading group nosed down and in almost no time they took on the definite shape and outline of Junker Ju. 88s, the huge long range Luftwaffe bombers powered by twin Daimler-Benz engines, which since tryouts during the winter over England had been changed some so that instead of being confined to level flight bombing they could perform Stuka or dive bombing work as well. Behind them in the second group were Heinkel 111 Ks, medium-sized bombers powered by two Junkers Juno radial engines.
Slipping the safety guard off the trigger button of his guns, Dave studied the enemy planes intently. That the Junkers 88s were heading down while the Heinkels stayed at altitude—in fact, were even starting to climb higher—seemed proof enough that a savage Stuka attack was to be made on the Victory while the main body of raiding aircraft swept onward to attack the principal unit of the British fleet a hundred miles or so ahead.
At that moment he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to find Freddy's grinning face close to his.
"Almost like a test, isn't it?" Freddy said, and held a hand over his flap-mike.
"Test?" Dave echoed and looked blank. "What do you mean, test?"