"So shut up!" Freddy ordered him. "Will you please stop defying the gods?"
"Sweet tripe!" Dawson snorted. "What a superstitious mug you turned out to be. But okay. Maybe we won't ever reach Chungking! There! Does that make you happy?"
"Makes me feel worse!" the English youth snapped. "Because there's no telling but what you might be right, at that!"
"Oh my gosh!" Dawson groaned, and shook his head sadly. "I wonder what kind of a bug did bite you there in the jungle anyway? My guess is that the natives around these parts call it the Coo-Coo Bug. A variety of the Screwy Family, probably!"
Freddy Farmer didn't make any retort to that, because he didn't have time to. At that moment Major Brown, Lieutenant Sweeney, and two other Flying Tigers came over to join them. The A.V.G. commander looked at Dawson's hastily washed and mended uniform, and grinned.
"Sorry our home-made steam laundry couldn't do better, Dawson," he chuckled. "But this is Burma, not China. Still, even at that, you'll be one of the best dressed people in Chungking, I guess. Their wardrobes have been Jap-bombed and blasted around plenty, too."
"I'm not fussy about my looks, Major," the young Yank air ace grinned back at him. "Even if I get to Chungking in a barrel, it'll be okay by me. Yeah! Just so long as I get there."
"Well, don't worry about that!" Major Brown said with a vigorous shake of his head. "We're practically there now. Just one more hop, and—Say! What's the matter, Farmer? You swallow something the wrong way?"
"No, no, sir!" Freddy hastily assured him, as the blood started up his neck. "Just had a bad memory for a moment. No, I'm quite all right. Quite!"
"Okay, then," the Flying Tiger group leader grunted, and glanced over at the warming up P-Forties. "Let's get this joy hop underway. We've got about eight hundred miles to go, but it'll be a cinch with those extra tanks fitted aboard. However, some Japs will be on the prowl, no doubt. So we'd better get on with it, so that we can get it over with, or something like that. Anyway, into your sky hacks, Gentlemen. See you all on the Chungking field, eventually."