"Poor devils!" Dave muttered shakily. "What a horrible way to die. They were rats, but—but that was a terrible way for even rats to die. They—"
The last was cut off as though by a knife. A section of the sky seemed to drop down and explode right on the nose of the Devastator. For a brief instant Dave found himself in a world of utter darkness. Then the plane went tearing out into clear light again. It was shuddering and trembling like a spent race horse. He knew without looking that the right wing had been blasted by bits of shrapnel, and that the tip was beginning to flutter. Instinct and instinct alone caused him to shove the nose down and lose altitude fast. But even as he went down he knew that losing altitude wasn't going to help much. The second of the Japanese cruisers was just ahead and below. And every gun aboard her was thundering away at the Devastator at practically point blank range.
[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN]
Death Hates To Lose
"Our bombs, Dave! Can you get us down lower and right over the blasted thing?"
Above the thundering roar of bursting anti-aircraft shells, Freddy Farmer's voice came to Dave as little more than a whisper. He heard it nevertheless, and nodded his head vigorously to let the English youth know that he had heard. They were right in the middle of the cruiser's fire now. It was just as safe to keep on going down on her as it was to try and break away. So long as he was able to dive, the Devastator presented a difficult target for the Jap gunners. But should he pull out of the dive, and arc off to either side, the Devastator would then instantly become a target tripled in size.
No, there was but one thing to do: to go on down on her and then let go with their wing bombs in the last instant allowed. That their bombs might put the cruiser out of action, to say nothing about sinking her, was completely out of the question. It was plain silly even to hope that such a miracle as that would come to pass. But it would be possible to put some of her guns out of action. And it was just barely possible, too, that the bombs might damage the craft enough to force the Jap commander to reduce her speed. That at least would be something.
Yes, indeed. If the cruiser was forced to reduce speed, she would at least have to give up the search for the Carrier Indian. And now that the two spies were gone, it was only logical that the Jap commander would go steaming southward in a desperate effort to find the Indian and pounce upon her in the dark.
"Sure, give her all you can!" Dave muttered as he hunched forward over the stick of the diving plane. "But don't kid yourself why. You know why, and how you do! Her fire has you bracketed. You'll catch it cold no matter which way you turn. So there's only one thing you can do. Slam down and give her all you've got left before your number and Freddy's number go up. Down—and give her all you can, while you can."
A wild desire to twist his head around and see how Freddy Farmer was taking it possessed Dave for a moment—but only for a moment. Just as suddenly he didn't want to see Freddy's face. Because of the look of certain death he felt sure he would see there? He didn't know. Because he was afraid that Freddy might read the truth in his own eyes? He didn't know. Only one thing seemed certain. Freddy Farmer and Dave Dawson had at long last come to the end of the trail. Their luck, if luck it was, had run out.