"The submarine detector has picked up something, I guess!" Dave muttered, and took a firmer grip on the chain rail. "Now, wouldn't it be sweet to get torpedoed even before we get any place?"
"You say the happiest things!" Freddy got out in a slightly strained voice. "Shut up, and use your eyes. Maybe we'll sight something."
"In this darkness?" Dave echoed, and promptly leaned over the chain rail and strained his eyes at the black water beyond the bow. "Don't be silly. Not unless it's trimmed with neon lights."
For perhaps five minutes the destroyer pounded through the night sea at emergency knots. Then the all clear horn sounded again. The destroyer's speed slackened off slightly, and her bow came cutting around to the previous course. A faint sigh of relief seemed to whisper along the spray-drenched decks. And then presently everything was as normal as before.
"Probably one of ours," Dave grunted. "Or just a false alarm. But either suits me okay. There's something about getting torpedoed and drowned that I just don't like."
"Quite, oh quite!" Freddy Farmer echoed. "If a chap has to cop one, much better to cop it in the air. Definitely cleaner, you know."
Dave nodded, but didn't make any comment. And once more the two air aces lapsed into silence and stood at the chain rail peering out over the night-shrouded waters, each with the same thought unspoken in his mind. Way out there ahead were two Yank aircraft carriers waiting to take them aboard. And when that was accomplished, then where to next? A tantalizing question that only time would answer for them. And the smirking gods of war, too, of course, if the two youths could but hear their death rattle voices!