“You look swell just as you are,” Ted joked. “I doubt if I could stand seeing you all whitened up and dressed in a nurse’s uniform.”
“You’ll see me that way all right,” was her reply. “I’ve got my uniform safely hidden away beneath a palm.”
“Huh!” Jack thought. “One more perfectly good mystery all shot to pieces!”
For all this, he realized that life at the battle front had not lost its interest. Mystery and adventure still lay before him.
Many questions remained to be answered. How had it happened that two men who seemed to be British left the island in the jet plane, and five—two Germans and three Japs—came back? Were those first two men Germans posing as Britishers? Could they be renegade Britishers, traitors to their country? Or were they loyal to their country, and had the jet plane been stolen from them?
One more thing Jack wanted to know. Who had manufactured that plane? In the scrapbook there had been articles in four languages, so it could easily have come from any of these lands. Of one thing he was certain. Give him a chance at it and he would fly that plane, first thing. And did he want to try it? Oh man! Did he!
“Suppose it’s a German plane of a design unknown to the Allies, what a scoop it would be if I could drop it down on the deck of the old Black Bee,” he thought. “Even if it were an American-built plane, I would be performing a great service if I snatched it from the enemy before they had used it as a model.” Yes, he must have that plane!
But first, he thought with a start, we’ve got to get Ted and his plane ashore before this mist clears and that jet plane fellow is out after us.
“How about getting this plane over to the island?” he demanded.
“All right. We got canoes. We pull ’em. No fly ’em,” said the Chief. “You fly ’em pretty soon.”