"You mean that the other way around, I fancy!" he snapped. "And I warn you, young fellow, this is absolutely your last chance! Mess up this show tonight, and I'll definitely leave you behind in all doings in the future. I'm completely fed up with shielding your mistakes from our superiors each time we go out on a show. Those things in the leading edge of your wings are guns, understand? They shoot bullets. But bullets meant for Nazi planes, not British or Yank or French or Polish or Canadian. Please have sense enough to remember this time. So don't forget! This is your last chance to prove you're the type to tackle big things with me."
"Boy! What a soap box artist you'd make!" Dave cried with a chuckle. "Give that vocation a thought, if you last out this war, Freddy. And right now stop breaking my fingers! What do you think you're doing? Cracking walnuts! Go on! Get into your ship before I break into tears. A tender babe like you, going along on a man's job! There should be a law, or something."
"Rot!" Freddy snapped, but his voice was a little husky. "Well, happy landings, Dave, old thing. See you anon at that cluster of shell-battered barns over in Occupied France."
"I'll be there waiting, sweetheart," Dave said. Then as a parting shot, "And don't forget the rip-cord ring. You have to yank it hard for the thing to open. Very necessary, you know."
"I'll do my best to remember, Dave," Freddy Farmer assured him.
And the two air aces climbed up into their Spitfires.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Silent Wings
France! The once brave, fighting nation now helpless in the steel-gloved hands of its ruthless conquerors. Some vowed that treachery in high places had doomed France. Others vowed it had been the vast superiority of the enemy in all things. And others vowed there was some other reason for the swift and devastating defeat of the once proud republic. But what did it matter, the reason, now? Or what would it matter until after the war had been fought and won by the United Nations? The fact was that France was in chains; helplessly, but not hopelessly, enslaved by a gang of war bandits who even insulted their own intelligence, what little there was of it, by referring to themselves as men and human beings.