Squinting ahead was like looking into the mouth of an exploding blast furnace. Every gun, from small machine guns and pom-poms to the big stuff, was hurling roaring steel in his direction. Everything else seemed to fade out of his vision. He could see nothing but that moving wall of spouting flame and smoke directly ahead. Split seconds seemed to take years in passing. A hundred times he was tempted to release the torpedo and zoom up for safe altitude. But each time he killed the desire.
The Devastator carried one torpedo, and he had to make it good. He couldn't take any chances of missing the sleek side of that steaming cruiser. He had to get in close, real close, and then slam home the steel fish. A bow hit or a stern hit wouldn't count. It had to be square amidships, where the explosion would tear the heart out of the Jap craft and sink it like a rock. He had to—
The Devastator suddenly seemed to half stop and lurch crazily to the side as a furious blast of fire from the enemy cruiser's guns crashed into it. Dave had the feeling that he had been slapped in the face with a barn door. He went dumb and stiff from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Everything turned into spinning red light before his eyes. He knew that he was lashed to the seat, and that both hands gripped the controls with fingers of steel. But he wasn't sure.
He wasn't sure of anything any more! Was Freddy Farmer still with him in the Devastator? Was the plane still with him, for that matter? Or had the withering blast of gunfire from the Japanese cruiser sent him sailing off into thin air and death?
He mustn't die now. Not yet! The suicide mission had only begun. The aerial torpedo was still in its rack under the Devastator's belly. Or was it? Had the cruiser's gunfire touched it off—and had Freddy and he failed?
"Freddy! Freddy Farmer! Are you with me, fellow? Are you still there, pal?"
Was that his own voice he heard—that faint little squeak that sounded in his ears? If only he could see something besides the darned dancing balls of light. If only he could get his muscles to move. But they wouldn't move. His whole body had been turned to stone, and he was falling straight down through a world of blazing flame. He was—
Suddenly it was as though a gigantic invisible hand had reached out and wiped away all the dancing colored light from in front of his eyes. Like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, he found himself staring at the instrument panel of the Douglas Devastator. He lifted his gaze, stared through the bullet-shattered front of his glass hatch, at the nose of the plane with its whirling prop—and at the shadow-filled Pacific sky beyond!
"You're nuts, you're completely cockeyed. You should be falling down, not zooming up!"
The sound of his own voice seemed to come to him from a great distance. He tried to shake his head, and found that he could. The movement dashed some of the cobwebs and the fog from his brain. He started to turn around in the seat when something hit him a terrific clip on the shoulder. It was Freddy Farmer's fist, and the English youth was yelling his head off.