Dave Dawson on Convoy Patrol

by Robert Sidney Bowen

The sound of his own voice helped. The crazy desire to quit and run faded away into thin air. His grip on the controls tightened and he held the Catalina in its downward plunge. In the matter of seconds he reached the layer of fleecy cloud. There he pulled out of his dive slightly, kept the nose down just a hair, and started circling about. The altimeter read three thousand feet. It was probably correct, but after what the craft had passed through, every instrument on the panel might be all cockeyed. And there were still black clouds below him. For all he knew they might be sitting right on top of the storm swept water. Death would have the last laugh if he should fly the Catalina right down into the wet stuff. No, the thing to do was to circle slowly and drop down foot by foot, and keep both eyes skinned for the first hole in the black stuff below. And, please God, he would be able to find a hole! If not....

He didn't finish the thought. At that instant something hit him a sharp blow on the right arm, and his own name was screamed in his ears.

"Dave, I've made contact! Positive this time. I got the raider's number signal as clear as a bell. She's close by, I'm positive. She wants a repeat on the convoy's location!"

Freddy Farmer's face was flaming red with excitement, and his eyes seemed to shoot out sparks as he yelled at Dave and continued to thump a fist on his right arm. Dave yanked his arm away and scowled.

"Hey, lay off!" he shouted. "But swell, Freddy! Give her direction X Dash M. That will take her out of this storm. She's moving with it now, that's a cinch. And it'll be tough for the navy boats to find her in that sea. The U-boats could scatter and skip away at will. Give her X Dash M direction signal and get her out into open sea. We'll go on back up for plenty altitude and pick her up when she comes out of the storm. Boy, I guess we're tops, huh?"

Freddy grinned like an imp but he didn't say anything. He was hard at work at his set again, sending out the misleading signals to the marauder of the high seas somewhere down there below the storm. For a couple of minutes longer curiosity, burning curiosity, forced Dave to continue circling downward searching for a hole that would give him a view of the surface of the ocean. However, before he could find a hole the sudden realization that he might spoil everything snapped him out of his trance, and made him pull the nose up, feed full fuel to his engines and start climbing the Catalina up through the center of the storm.

"Spoil things, and how!" he echoed the thought aloud. "If that raider should spot us, ten to one her commander would wonder plenty how-come we were so close. Use your head, Dave, and keep using it!"

"I quite agree, though I don't know what you mean," he heard Freddy shout. "A bad sign, though, when a chap starts talking to himself, you know. That tossing around didn't get you, did it?"

The English youth was grinning broadly and there was the old sparkle in his eyes. Gone was the haggard, worn out look. That they had made contact with the raider in their last desperate try had made a new man of Freddy. Dave grinned back at him and felt ten times better himself. Now they had something they could dig their teeth into. No more stumbling around hoping against hope, and meeting with defeat at every turn. Once they reached high altitude and spotted the raider when she came out beyond the rim of the storm, everything would be all to the merry. True, maybe whirlwind action lay just ahead, but that was okay. It would be action with a purpose, not useless unfinished action.

"I'm okay!" he said to Freddy. "I mean, no more goofy than usual. But I do feel tops, now. As soon as we sight that baby send her a course correction and get her headed once again toward that Fleet unit. And once she's on course get set for anything."