"Sure!" Dave chuckled. "Get a copy of the London Times tomorrow. There may even be pictures."
"Say, I'll jolly well do that!" Flight Lieutenant Wiggins said with mock excitement. "And some day I'll tell my grandchildren that I shook hands with the two chaps who nurse-maided Adolf Hitler back to England. So I guess I'd better do that, now."
They had reached the side of the nearest Wellington. Flight Lieutenant Wiggins stopped and in turn shook each boy warmly by the hand.
"Happy landings, lads," he said quietly. "Tally-ho, and all that sort of thing, you know. Well, up into her."
A warm and exhilarating glow tingled through Dave and Freddy as they climbed up through the belly door of the Wellington bomber and made their way forward toward the navigator's cubbyhole just in back of the pilot. The kidding with Flight Lieutenant Wiggins had removed a lot of ugly thoughts. That was the old R.A.F. spirit. Perhaps not one of these Wellingtons would return from their dangerous night raids over Germany, but the pilots and the crews didn't talk about that. They didn't even think about it. They were R.A.F., and there was a job to do. And that was that. No fuss and feathers. No back slapping and brass bands. Battling death and beating it at its own game was routine with them, and they took it as such, with a smile and a joke on their lips.
When they were seated on the two small canvas stools, Dave reached over, pressed Freddy's knee and winked at him in the pale glow of the single light bulb fitted to a fuselage bracing strip. Freddy winked back and smiled. A moment later the fuselage light winked out, and there was no light save the pencil beam of the navigator's bulb, and the fused glow of the instrument panel up forward. Flight Lieutenant Wiggins ran up his engines, checked the radio, and then trundled his bomb-loaded ship to the far end of the field and swung it around into the wind.
There he waited with idling engines for the three other planes in the patrol to take up line-astern position. When they were in place and ready, radio orders came from the field's Operations Office for the take-off. Wiggins pushed throttles forward, and the two Pegasus engines roared up in a mighty song of power. The Wellington quivered and trembled for a moment as though it were reluctant to leave the safety of English soil. Then slowly it moved forward down a long line of flares set out on the field. With every revolution of its twin propellers the plane picked up speed. Presently it was bouncing down that line of flares on its wheels with the tail up. A moment or so more and Flight Lieutenant Wiggins pulled back on the controls. The bouncing stopped, and the Wellington went curving up toward the star-dotted night sky.
The instant the wheels were clear and the bomber was mounting up toward Heaven, Dave twisted slightly so that he could peek out the navigator's port and down at the shadowy mass that was England falling away from the plane. For one brief instant stark fright streaked through his heart. It passed, and a tight grin came to his lips. He turned his head and looked past Flight Lieutenant Wiggins and through the reinforced glass nose of the plane—and on into the future.
"Pierre Deschaud, here we come!" he whispered softly to himself.