The Robin gained speed until she was outrunning the charging soldiers. Stan headed her down the field and, as she moved away from the soldiers, she gained speed. By the time she had reached the end of the runway she was moving about as fast as a horse could gallop. Two guards were coming down the field but they had emptied their guns. Stan was glad Te Nuwa’s field was far away from the Jap base.
He cramped the Robin around and headed her back. She did not have speed enough to take off and he would have to make another run up the field. He charged upon the onrushing men at a brisk pace. The guards ducked and leaped aside. The Robin galloped past them and up to the shed, where Stan whipped her around again and headed down the field for the second time. Then he spied a squad of machine gunners coming out of the woods. It was up this time or be riddled.
Stan opened the throttle wide and the ancient motor rattled and pounded as it broke into a surge of power. He let the ship roll as far as he dared. Machine guns were rattling away but all the bullets were going wild. Stan hoicked the Robin’s tail and eased back on the stick.
The Robin wobbled off the ground and went slithering between two tall trees. Her nose was up, but she wasn’t gaining much altitude. Stan had his directions well fixed in his mind. He was not sure where the town lay or where the Jap base was located, but he did know which way led home.
He laid over a little and scraped over the spires of a temple. The roof of the building was red and Stan remembered what Niva had said about the Japanese base being close to a red-roofed temple. He surged out over the tops of a mass of trees and saw lights dotting the jungle below. By those lights he could see the forms of bombers and fighter planes parked in the woods.
As he roared low over the trees, the lights below began to wink out and a fifty-caliber gun barked at him. The Robin was lifting now and as she moved up from the jungle, a burst of shells rocketed past her, bursting high above.
Stan laughed softly to himself. The Japs had been careful to hide all planes. He had spotted the take-off area and there was not a plane on it. It lay there in the moonlight empty and deserted. That was a break for the slow-moving Robin.
The Robin’s motor started to get hot and some of the knocks died down. She hammered along, but Stan knew she was not doing over one hundred twenty miles per hour. Stan thinned her mixture and went on up into the moonlit sky.
After a bit he began watching for the Salween River. He was sure he was in the area where they had landed with the Martin. Of course he was not flying a P–40 at three hundred miles an hour, but he was getting along very nicely.
He was beginning to worry about his directions when he spotted a band of moonlight on water. The Robin roared out over the wide river and Stan eased back. He was not helping the speed of the old ship by leaning forward.