* * * * * * * *
Next morning at dawn a squad of U. S. engineers with a hundred Chinese workmen appeared at Mai-da’s home prepared to rebuild it. And at that same dawn Jimmie and Gale tuned up their bombing plane to join their flight of forty big ships bound for Tokio.
They dropped down half way to Tokio to take on gas, then sped on their way.
It was a glorious day, with white clouds floating high. The beauty and peace of the land far beneath them told nothing of war.
As they came closer to the sea, clouds thickened. Soon they were passing through miles of gray mist.
Gale, busy with her instrument, feeling for danger here, there and everywhere, suddenly exclaimed:
“Airplanes almost straight ahead; lower down than we are; ten miles away.”
“Gale! You must be wrong!” Jimmie exclaimed.
“I can’t be,” Gale insisted. And it was right there that the girl earned her passage.
Jimmie lowered his plane, altered his direction, slowed down, then popped out of a cloud almost upon three Jap scouting planes. Had the pilots of these planes been given thirty seconds of life Tokio must have been warned. Thirty seconds was denied them. Cannons and machine guns raked them from engine to tail, and down they went, one, two, three.