"Three guesses!" he said. "And all of them correct. We go down and play we're in the Navy. And I.... Oh my gosh, Freddy! Look! That rotten bum plastered our radio and knocked it haywire. That means our signal's stopped going out over the air. And that means that the navy ships and planes will come a-running, and there's not a raider or a U-boat within miles of here, I bet."
Freddy looked blank for a moment. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
"What a lad, what a lad!" he finally cried. "Yes sir, one in a million. Sure the planes and ships will come a-running. But won't it make you feel good to be picked up instead of floating around until you sink?"
Dave grinned and gave a little shake of his head.
"Yes, I guess it will at that," he said. "But, heck, once we crashed the signal would have stopped, and they'd have come anyway. But darn it, I don't like this, Freddy. Not even a little bit. I've got a funny feeling that Manners didn't think of this possibility at all."
"What do you mean by that crack?" Freddy exclaimed as he saw the look on Dave's face.
The Yank R.A.F. ace slowly raised a hand and pointed ahead and toward the east. Freddy looked in that direction, gulped, but said nothing. About a mile away and just beneath the surface of the water was the tell-tale shadow of a submarine. It was slowly coming to the surface, and as the boys watched it they saw that it was a Nazi U-boat. Just a lone Nazi U-boat in an area where they had been expected to sight ten or fifteen in the company of a powerful surface raider.
Dave slowly turned and looked Freddy in the eye.
"And on second thought I like it even worse," he said. "That U-boat knew that we were coming here. It also knew that a Fairey Swordfish was going to shoot us down. Catch on to what I mean?"
"No, I don't quite follow you," Freddy said with a worried shake of his head.