"Sweet going!" Dave heard his own voice shout in praise. "That's showing the guys how good their Paul Prys are. Oh-oh! I had forgotten about those birds!"
The last exclamation was caused by the staccato yammer of aerial machine gun fire coming to his ears once again. And almost instantly the sound of the guns in the tail of the Wellington was added to the chatter. Dave and Freddy hugged their seats and felt very helpless and useless. They were really passengers aboard the plane, and there was nothing they could do but sit tight. Sit tight—and think.
That was the hard part. Thinking! Because their thoughts were far from joyous ones. Dave's hunch had started to come true. In another few moments they should have been floating down toward Belgium soil. But all that was changed, now. Fate had guided night flying German planes to their position in the sky, and those Nazi pilots were doing their utmost to finish them off right then and there.
"Just as though they knew we were coming, and were hiding in the bushes!" Dave muttered to himself as British and German aerial machine guns hammered away at each other. "Just as though—Ye Gods! Could that be true? Do the Nazis know that Freddy and I are—"
He cut off the startling thought short and gulped. Then suddenly the whole night sky seemed to explode right on the tip of the Wellington's nose. Colored light and sound raced back to crash against Dave and Freddy as though they were things actually made of solid substances. Dave braced himself and squinted forward. What he saw brought a sharp cry to his lips, and he came up off his stool as though a coiled spring had been released under him.
"We're hit, Freddy!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Wiggins and the other chap caught some of that anti-aircraft shell."
Twisting past the navigator's cubbyhole, Dave went forward to where Flight Lieutenant Wiggins sat slumped over against the controls. His weight had forced the Dep control stick forward, and the Wellington was now tearing down in a thundering dive. The second pilot had been knocked clean off his canvas seat and was stretched out motionless on the cockpit flooring. Bracing himself, Dave reached out and pulled the unconscious Wiggins back in the seat with one hand. Holding the man there, he reached down and grabbed hold of the Dep wheel and gave it all of his strength. The nose tried to drag itself down to the vertical, but Dave's pull on the stick was too much. Inch by inch the plane's nose came up, and after what seemed like years the craft was climbing upward at a slightly flat angle.
"Help me get Wiggins out of the seat!" Dave shouted to Freddy at his elbow. "I'll take over while you fellows see if they're badly hurt."
"Right you are!" Freddy called out in a clear steady voice. "Here, I'll give you a hand with Wiggins and this other chap."
Together the boys lifted and dragged Flight Lieutenant Wiggins and his second pilot out of the cockpit and back toward the navigator's cubbyhole. The navigator seemed too amazed to lend a hand at first.