“No difference, my boy,” Jimmy Jennings told him with an attempt at jauntiness. “None of us could swim over a mile. Who thinks he could make five hundred feet through that forest of fins?”
And he was right. It seemed as if every shark in the Atlantic ocean had come to the picnic. But there were still unexplored sections, little towns along the shore which needed help, and on we went. Twenty Donovan ships were ferrying supplies; one came in almost every ten minutes. God knows we were willing to fly until we dropped. Those poor devils down in the water will haunt me to my dying day, I guess.
The sun was setting, when I turned around from a spot ten miles out in the Gulf, my last package dropped and my patrol over. My twelve-cylinder Liberty had never missed a lick, and I remembered saying over and over to the rhythm of the motors:
“If you’ll only keep it up—if you’ll only keep it up—”
My ears were ringing from a day’s bombardment; my face was so sun-burnt with sun and wind that it was sore as a boil, and I was more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. Two other D.H.’s, one a mile to my right and the other on beyond, were coming home across the vile, befouled water.
I was two thousand feet high, and land was six or seven miles ahead, when Hickman grabbed me with a grip like a vise. My heart did a backflip, and I turned as if I’d been shot. He was pointing to the right. In a second I had swung my ship and was flying wide-open toward that middle D.H.
It was coming down in a shallow dive. The propeller was turning as slowly as a water-wheel. One look was enough to tell me that the motor was dead, and that only the air-stream was moving the stick.
Two of the boys were going to the sharks.
I was diving now, motor full on. I don’t know why. I guess I had some wild idea that I could help them out. The other ship was heading for the falling D.H., too. We ranged alongside it almost together. The pilot in the crippled plane was Ralph Kennedy. The man in the third ship was Penoch O’Reilly.