"Well, thanks to whoever did it, anyway," Dave breathed back. "And I guess we've fooled those guards. Boy, does it give you a chill to be popped at by your own kind. Gosh, I...!"
"Tell me later!" Freddy hissed. "This water is what's giving me a chill. Come on, in we go. For goodness' sake, don't lose your hold and fall back into the water. It'll rouse the whole Station!"
"Okay!" Dave growled and pushed Freddy toward the flying boat's hull. "Don't you be greasy fingers either!"
Perhaps it was a minute, or perhaps it was two before the two youths were inside the Catalina flying boat, had the hull door shut and were up forward. Dave slid into the pilot's seat and reached for the engine switches, and starter buttons. He was about to snap and press them when a terrible thought crashed through his brain.
"Man, oh, man, are we starting off fine!" he choked out. "The mooring line, Freddy! Hop down and cast us free!"
"Well, can you beat that?" Freddy gasped and instantly ducked down out of sight and went forward to the gunner's nook in the nose of the hull.
A couple of moments later Dave felt the flying boat ride free. And an instant after that Freddy was back in the seat at his side. He reached for the switches and starter buttons again.
"If you've led a good life, pray hard, Freddy!" he said. "If you haven't, pray hard, anyway!"
No sooner had the last slipped off his lips than Dave whipped up the switches and jabbed the starter buttons. There was an eternity of silence. Then the silence was shattered by the whining grind of the starter gears. Then the port engine roared into life, and a split second later the starboard engine thundered into action. Fingers flying about in the dark, Dave adjusted fuel pressure, oil, propeller pitch and engine synchronization. And at the same time he applied the sea rudder and swung the huge craft a quarter turn and headed out toward open sea beyond the basin breakwater.
All that took but a matter of split seconds, yet to Dave and Freddy a thousand years seemed to drag by. It seemed to them as though the Catalina was not moving an inch seaward; as though invisible hands were holding it back. And all the time the thunder of the powerful engines was enough to wake up the dead in China.