The Colonel blinked and gave Dave a startled look. It wasn't every day that a junior officer flung words into his teeth, and it caught him completely off balance.
"But it's you I'm thinking of!" he blurted out. "I—"
"Oh, quite!" Freddy snapped him off. "We understand perfectly! We bungled it last night, Dave and I, not getting away from that beggar in the Waco. Shouldn't let him hit the engine. Yet, we'd probably make a worse mess of things if you sent us aboard the Indian."
"Now, that's not true!" the Colonel shouted. Then, sucking in his breath: "You two are making me mad. You're taking it the wrong way. I—"
"And how do you think we feel?" Dave stepped right in on him. "Last night you had a job for us to tackle. We might click on it, or we might muff it. You didn't have a thing for us to work on. But at least we were going to have a crack at it, and be aboard a ship that's going into action. Well, have you any more for us to work on, now, than you had last night? No. Not a thing more. The only difference is that the rat aboard knows we're coming aboard. At least we think he knows. But we're not even sure of that! Yet—well, holy catfish! Now you want to call everything off because the other guy holds more cards than we do; because we might get hurt. Look, Colonel! What do you think Freddy and I have been doing with the enemy ever since we got into the Royal Air Force? Playing snowball with them? We run the risk of being blacked out for keeps. So what? Doggone it! We've seen enough of this war to know it's no tea party."
"Exactly, and absolutely!" Freddy Farmer echoed vigorously as Dave ran out of breath.
Colonel Welsh glared at them for a full ten seconds. Then his stern face slowly broke into a grin, and he gave a little baffled shake of his head.
"Wild men!" he grunted. "I don't believe either of you knows even how to spell common sense. But maybe that's been the secret of your war success. That, and cold courage. All right, you win. You sail with the Indian. I'll see that you're put aboard the tender and taken out to her. The least I can do is spare your lives as long as I can."
"You mean because of what happened to your two agents last night?" Dave asked with a grin.
Colonel Welsh stood up and shook his head.