Dave Dawson in Libya

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Dave looked at the cool, calm expression in the English youth's eyes, and at the grim set of his jaws.

"Yeah," he murmured with a chuckle. "I just bet bailing out scares the pants off you. And probably eating an ice cream soda does the same thing, you old soldier. Okay, then, we'll take the bus downstairs and sit down on the sand."

The two boys smiled at each other, but each could see that there was no joy in the other's eyes. Instead there was a look of bitterness and helpless rage that neither could keep from showing through. The one thing they had feared most had come to pass. Their Skua wasn't of any more use to them now. They were on their way down into the middle of a desert wilderness. And after what. Nothing. They had accomplished nothing during the three hours and some odd minutes that had passed since taking off from the flight deck of the Victory. For all the good they had accomplished, for all the enemy information they had obtained, they might just as well have stayed aboard the carrier.

It was no use trying to dodge the truth. They had failed in their mission completely, and now they were on their way down to battle for their lives against the enemy desert and the enemy sun.

"Thumbs up, Freddy!" Dave suddenly said in a steady voice. "We're not admitting defeat yet—no, not by a darn sight."

"Certainly not!" the English youth echoed. "I've always wanted to see what it was like in the middle of a desert, anyway. So take me down, my good man. I want to stretch my legs."

Dave grinned and winked and then turned front and gave his attention to flying. He circled the ship around and headed it due north at a gliding angle that was just a degree or two above the stalling point. Safety lay to the north, and the farther he could stretch the plane's glide in that direction the less the number of miles Freddy and he would have to plod over the desert sands.

Holding the ship steady, he hunched forward in the seat and stared hard and long at the uninviting expanse of desert that stretched out on all sides toward the four horizons. Half a dozen times he thought he saw dark splotches down on the sand—dots and darkish shapes that might possibly mark the location of a village, or perhaps even an Axis (German-Italian) desert outpost. But when he tried to get a better look, the rays of the sun reflecting upward from the shimmering sand made his eyes smart and water, and everything to swim around in his gaze.

Inch by inch he eased the plane downward as slowly as he dared, and used every bit of his flying skill to stretch the glide as far northward as possible. No airplane, however, can remain aloft without the use of its engine, and the Skua's engine was dead for keeps. And so after a certain length of time the desert was only a few hundred feet beneath the wheels he had cranked down out of the wing. At that low altitude the desert ceased to be flat and smooth as a sheet of ice. Dave saw that it was very much ridged by sand dunes built up by desert storms. And he saw also that there actually was considerable shrubbery about. But of course it was desert growth, and so bleached and whitened by the hot rays of the sun and the drifting sand that the stuff blended in perfectly with the sand. Unless you were practically down in it, you could very easily miss it altogether.

"Okay, Freddy, hang onto your hat!" Dave shouted as he eased the plane up out of its gliding angle and prepared to sit down on the sand. "This is it. Here we go!"