"That's the boy, Freddy!" Dave cried, and patted his shoulder. "That's the old fighting spirit. Okay, it's a deal, huh?"
"You and your wild ideas!" The English youth sighed, then smiled faintly. "They'll probably end up putting me in front of a firing squad one of these days. It might just be crazy enough to work, though, I guess. Right you are, you mad hatter. It's a go."
"My pal!" Dave breathed, and beamed at him. "Contact, then! Let's peel off the stuff we don't need, and muss ourselves up to look as though we've been through the mill."
"If we haven't been through the mill today," Freddy groaned, and started burying things in the sand, "then I sure don't know what you'd call it. But just remember, my little friend, if I get shot for this, I'll come back to haunt you every single night, I promise you that!"
"You won't have to come back," Dave brushed the threat aside, "because I'll be right there with you."
"I don't doubt it for a minute," Freddy said with a hopeless shrug. "The lad's just like my shadow. Can't get rid of it. Ah me! If I'd only had sense and remained in England, I'd probably be an air vice-marshal about now. Oh well, such is life!"
"Boy, am I glad!" Dave murmured with feeling.
"Glad about what?" the English youth asked unsuspectingly.
"Why, that you didn't stay in England and get promoted to be an air vice-marshal, of course," Dave said solemnly. "After all the good old R.A.F. has done, to have it fold up and fall apart because a young squirt has—I just can't finish. I shudder even at the thought of such a fate for the R.A.F."
"So?" Freddy grunted, and gave him a stern look. "Very well, then, I refuse to go through with this as planned. I'm going to tell them the truth. They may be Germans and rotters, but just the same I can't play that kind of a dirty trick even on them."