Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress Read online

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FLOATING WRECKAGE

  For the rest of the night, most of the catamaran’s company dozed orslept. The craft was amazingly steady for its size. Although low to thewater, she was not particularly “wet.” The raised central platform onwhich her crew sat or sprawled caught only a feather of spray from timeto time. The four natives slept as soundly as if they were on shore.

  At dawn the breeze freshened. For three hours the catamaran skippedsouthward over the long rollers, while everyone kept a sharp lookoutfor planes. Fiber mats were lashed in place to afford the greatestpossible shade. Barry noticed with amazement how cleverly Dora Wilcoxhad painted their top surfaces to look like wreckage to a passingplane. Only the sail and the greenish wake behind could tell a Jappilot that there was life on the crazy-looking craft. At first sight ofa plane, Barry planned to drop the sail, and trust that the fading wakewould not be noticed.

  “Every mile that we cover lessens our danger,” he declared, “and everyunnecessary hour we spend in enemy waters increases it. I think it’sworth the risk to keep moving—especially in perfect sailing weatherlike this.”

  His companions agreed. There was risk, whichever way they turned, andto know that every hour cut their distance from the continent by eightor nine more miles was a great boost to their morale.

  At noon the wind had slackened. The catamaran was making barely fiveknots, Curly judged. The sky was like a vast, blue furnace, without aspeck of cloud. Had it not been for the straw mats, the white membersof the company would have been painfully sunburned. The four nativeswere elected to keep watch for planes, as their eyes and their skinswere better able to stand intense sunlight.

  The watchers may not have been to blame for failing to see the Japseaplane in time. He had probably come gliding out of the sun,invisible and silent. The roar of his motor and the snarling of hismachine guns, as he suddenly power-dived, were the Americans’ firstwarning.

  Thirty-caliber bullets peppered the catamaran. A few pierced thecamouflage matting. Three or four, by some freak, chewed the mast halfthrough at a point four feet above the decking. One struck the leg ofNanu, the steersman. The rest of the little slugs struck the log hullsor missed entirely.

  Glenn Crayle, who had remained until now in a shell-shocked stupor,came to life with a howl. A bullet had grazed his shin. He moaned forhelp, but nobody paid any attention. Barry Blake’s quick, sharp ordersaverted the panic that otherwise might have cost them all their lives.

  “Lie low, everybody. Whatever happens, don’t disturb the mats. MickeyRourke, crawl outside with your tommy-gun and pretend to be wounded.Send the native women in under cover. That Jap will be back in twoshakes to look us over. If he flies low enough to make sure of yourhitting him, let him have it.... Otherwise hold your fire.”

  Claire Barrows began weeping hysterically.

  “We’ll all be k-killed,” she sobbed. “Like rats in a c-cage. I’mg-going to jump overboard and—”

  SMACK!

  Dora Wilcox slapped her friend hard across the mouth.

  “Stop it, Claire, this instant!” she commanded. “A fine example you’resetting Alua and Lehu. For shame!”

  As Claire’s sobs quieted, Mickey’s voice reached the others fromoutside the shelter of mats.

  “The Jap is comin’ in low to see what he did to us,” the littlesergeant reported. “I’ll play dead till the last second, and then pourit into him. He’s a _Nakajima_ single-engine job, equipped with floats.”

  The hum of the Jap’s motor grew louder. Once more his machine gunsopened up, but this time his burst was high enough to miss thecatamaran’s crew. It finished the mast which fell across the matting,scaring the women but doing no damage.

  As the plane roared low overhead, Mickey Rourke’s gun opened up. Itsharsh, deadly chatter held the hopes of fourteen souls. It ceased, andthe Jap’s engine song rose sharply.

  “I hit him!” came Mickey’s whoop. “He’s zoomin’.... He’s goin’ into astall.... His engine’s smokin’ and he’s goin’ to crash!”

  Without waiting for more, the catamaran’s company threw aside theconcealing mats. They were just in time to see the _Nakajima_ end hertail-spin in a great splash and a burst of flame, less than two hundredyards away.

  The fight was over. Except for a patch of burning oil on the water, andthe three wounded persons on the sailing craft, it would have been hardto realize that the thing had not been a nightmare.

  “’Twas just as I saw it in me dream,” Mickey Rourke was saying. “Theonly part I didn’t see was Nanu and Miss Wilcox bein’ wounded—”

  “What’s that?” Barry cut in. “You wounded, Dora? Let me see what’sunder that cloth!”

  The girl shook her head. Her face was pale, but the hand with which shepressed a folded towel to her left arm was perfectly steady.

  “See to Nanu first,” she replied. “Hurry—or I’ll do it myself. He’slost too much blood already. You’ll find clean cloths here in my littlechest.”

  Barry flung open the cover of the teakwood box she indicated. Inside,packed neatly with a few feminine belongings, were a number of old,clean cloths. Barry snatched out a threadbare pillowcase and a man’sragged white shirtsleeve. With these, he made his way to Nanu who satin the stern with his hands clasped around his thigh.

  The native boy’s wound was a clean puncture. The small-caliber,steel-jacketed bullet had passed through his thigh muscles just abovethe knee. Fortunately it had missed the larger artery and the blood hadalready begun to clot. Barry applied a cloth pad to each bullet hole,binding them tightly in place with strips of the old pillowcase.Throughout the operation, Nanu lay quiet. When Barry slapped him on theshoulder and told him, “Everything’s okay!” the boy’s eyes had lost alltrace of fright.

  Meanwhile, Claire and Hap were dressing Dora’s hurt. A bullet hadgouged her forearm, making a painful but not a crippling wound. Claireshowed considerable skill in the bandaging. She had brought her nervesfully under control, and was giving sharp orders to Hap.

  Barry glanced at the splintered mast and fallen sail. Before muchprogress could be made, it was evident that the catamaran would have toland for repairs. At present it looked so thoroughly wrecked that themost suspicious Jap patrol pilot would hardly waste bullets on it.

  The same thoughts were evidently in Curly Levitt’s mind. Standing upbeside his skipper, he pointed to a fairly large island, seven or eightmiles to leeward.

  “We can go ashore there tonight, Barry,” he said. “With the sailhanging on the stump of the mast as it is now, we’ll drift toward thatisland at the rate of about one knot per hour. Everybody can keep outof sight under the mats and wreckage. We’ll tie the steering oar inplace and let the wind do the rest....”

  “No!” Glenn Crayle’s shout interrupted him. “You’re foolish to go anynearer to land. The Japs will bomb us. They’ll shoot us down like dogs.You’ve got paddles, haven’t you? Start using them, then, if you’re nottoo lazy! I forbid you to head for shore, Blake!”

  “He’s crazy as a loon,” Curly muttered. “How are we going to shut himup, Barry?”

  The young skipper made his way forward to where Crayle sat binding ahandkerchief around his grazed shin. He took a firm grip on theshell-shocked pilot’s shoulder.

  “Look there, Crayle,” he said, pointing to a black triangular fin thatshowed above the oncoming wave. “That shark is hungry. He smells blood.He’ll probably trail this boat till it lands—unless one of us fallsoverboard. Be quiet and behave yourself, or _you’ll be that one_!”

  Crayle’s mouth fell open. In sudden terror he gazed at the approachingshark.

  “No! No!” he moaned, clutching Barry’s arm.

  The young skipper freed himself with a grimace of disgust.

  “Everybody under the mats!” he ordered. “There’s no telling when thenext Jap plane will show up. Once we’re out of sight we can relax andeat a bit of lunch, if the ladies care to break into their suppliesnow.”

  Cocoanu
ts, bananas, smoked chicken and taro bread had been stored inthe catamaran’s hollow hulls—enough to last the entire company for aweek. Since it was the first meal the bomber’s crew had tasted for awhole day, they were given extra rations.

  Crayle wolfed down his share and reached for more. A sharp word fromBarry stopped him, but the young skipper caught a look of animalcunning that replaced the greed in the other’s eyes. From now on, Barrydecided, the shock-crazed lieutenant would need to be watched like awild beast. There was no predicting what mad impulse might seize histwisted brain.

  They were finishing their meal when another Jap plane roared overhead.This was a twin-engined _Mitsubishi_ bomber, a land-based type, thatappeared to have taken off from the island to leeward. It swooped lowto investigate the drifting catamaran.

  For a tense thirty seconds Barry’s party waited, and wondered if morebullets would come slashing through their thin fiber mats. Then theengines’ snarl faded to a distant droning. Their camouflage had worked!

  Not so pleasant was the thought that they would have to land on a beachpatrolled by the enemy. If this island were the site of a Jap air baseit would be well guarded. Even the darkness might not be camouflageenough to fool the Nip patrols.

  As the afternoon waned, the island’s shore line grew more and moredistinct. A second bomber rose from behind the wall of dark greenjungle, and three more returned from some patrol or bombing mission.There could be no doubt of the existence of an air base somewhereinland from the beach.

  The one encouraging fact was that none of the planes paid anyparticular attention to the drifting catamaran. Undoubtedly they hadall looked it over. If the wreck looked so harmless to the Jap pilots,shore patrols were not likely to bother their heads about it. The realdanger would come after Barry’s crew went ashore to cut a new mast.

  The sun was low in the west when two squadrons of heavy bombersapproached at 20,000 feet. Even before the Jap ack-ack on the islandcut loose, Barry’s party recognized them—_American Flying Fortressesand Liberators_!

  Peering up through the cracks in the camouflage, everyone aboard thecatamaran raised a wild cheer. For a moment, Barry had all he could doto keep his crew from tossing the fiber mats aside and standing up towave. His orders were drowned out by the thunder of exploding bombs.

  _Peering Through the Camouflage They All Cheered_]

  The noise, even at a distance of three miles, was ear-shattering. Thevery ocean shuddered. More than eighty tons of block-busters, Barrylater calculated, must have been dropped within the space of a fewminutes on the Jap air base.

  When the two squadrons re-formed and wheeled majestically away into theevening sky, not a single shellburst followed them. The Japantiaircraft was wiped out. Instead of ack-ack a vast pillar of smokeand flame mushroomed up from the smitten jungle.

  For some moments afterward no word was spoken aboard the drifting boat.That swift, devastating raid had left the watchers awed, and a littledazed. Chick Enders was the first to break silence.

  “So,” he exclaimed hoarsely, “that’s the way a real air-blitz soundsand looks from below! The next time I’m laying big eggs on Hirohito’slittle boys, I’ll know better what I’m dishing out to them!”

  Most of the crew wanted to paddle ashore immediately, but Barryrestrained them. Unless the Jap beach patrols had received orders toleave their posts, they would still be there. No single bombing raid,however terrible, could demoralize those tough, stupid little beasts.Their meager mental life was shaped and ruled by discipline. Only theirhigher officers were trained to think their way out of a difficulty.

  The night came swiftly, with no clouds to reflect the sun’s afterglow.This night there would be a brief interval between sunset andmoonrise—just enough to let the catamaran paddle ashore unseen. Thestrong arms of Barry and his teammates made the most of it. Just as themoon’s silver rim peeped over the eastern horizon, they grounded theircraft at the jungle’s edge, in the shelter of a little sandspit.

  Since the tide was high, and already beginning to ebb, there was noneed to tie the catamaran. Pulling it just out of reach of the waves,the whole party left it, and followed Barry into the bush.

  “Dora,” the young skipper said, low-voiced, “you and your people willstay here, within sight of Nanu and the catamaran. You can stretch yourlegs, but don’t move about too much or make a noise. I’ll leave MickeyRourke on guard with his tommy-gun. He’ll watch for Japs and keep aneye on Crayle. The rest of the boys will go with me to look for a mast.If we should run into trouble we have our pistols.”

  “I’d rather we all went with you, Barry,” the girl responded. “We couldcarry Nanu into the bush where he wouldn’t be found. Where there’sdanger, we shouldn’t be separated.”

  “If we were all fighting men, I’d agree with you, Dora,” he said. “Asit is, you have no right to risk the lives of your people in order tostand by me and my crew. If a Jap patrol spots the catamaran whilewe’re gone, your job, and Mickey Rourke’s, is to fight clear of thebeach and push out to sea. Never mind the rest of us. Naturally I hopeneither you nor we are going to be discovered; but if we shouldbe—well, so long and take care of yourself!”

  He turned away quickly, beckoning his team after him, and headed up thebeach. By keeping to the shadows at the jungle’s edge, they remainedunder cover and at the same time had light enough to see where theywere going. Each man scanned the jungle growth nearest him for anyslim, straight young tree that might serve to support the catamaran’ssail. Bamboo, of course, would be the best, but that could only befound in the interior.

  They had gone no more than five hundred yards when Barry halted, with asharp hiss of warning.

  “I heard voices,” he whispered, “ahead of us and to the left.... There!Did you hear that, Chick?”

  “Jap talk!” muttered the little bombardier. “Look! Isn’t that the mouthof a creek just beyond us? I think that’s where they are.”

  “You’re right, old Eagle-eye!” the skipper exclaimed. “Follow me, anddon’t make a sound. I want to see what’s going on.”

  The voices grew louder as they advanced. The Japs, it appeared, weresome little distance up the creek. From the sounds, Barry judged thatthey were loading something into a boat. He found a little trailbordering the creek bank, and followed it.

  Where the trail bent sharply to the left, he saw the flicker offlashlights. Less than a hundred feet away, two Jap motor launches weredrawn up to the bank. Both were partly filled with soldiers. One ofthem was still half covered with the camouflage net that had concealedit during the day. Into the other launch someone, probably an officer,was being loaded on a stretcher. The Japs, Barry knew, lost interest inan ordinary soldier the moment he fell sick or wounded, and abandonedhim promptly.

  This looked like a general exodus from the island. If that were thecase it could mean only one thing: The bombing raid had smashed everyinstallation of value at the air base, including the radio. It musthave killed most of the personnel, too. These thirty or forty men couldbe only a small part of the air field’s ground forces.

  As the last soldier jumped in, the motors of both launches sputteredinto life. In wondering silence the American fliers watched theirenemies disappear around the bend, heading out to sea.

  “Do you really think that’s the last of ’em?” Hap Newton asked. “Itdoesn’t seem possible that we’re the only ones alive on the island. Andyet, why would _two_ boatloads of Japs clear out if they just wanted tosend for help?”

  “There’s just one way to make sure what has happened,” Barry Blakeresponded. “We’ll follow this trail to the airfield and see forourselves. If the Japs have abandoned the island it won’t be for long,but I should enjoy a chance to look the place over.”

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