“You’ll be in danger many times,” he had said in a serious, friendly voice. “Your superior officers will not always be present to make decisions for you. You’ll sometimes have to make them for yourself. Always keep this thought uppermost in your mind: you are worth a great deal more to your country alive than dead. Don’t take unnecessary chances.”
“Am I planning to take unnecessary chances now?” he asked himself. Though he did not know the answer, he was willing to take the risk.
One more thing had made a lasting impression on him. “Jack, my boy,” said his uncle, who limped as a result of wounds received in France, “the thing I want most to tell you is this. While you are in service you will have comrades, many boon companions, and if you treat them right, as I know you will, you’re sure to make attachments that will last as long as you live. You see, Jack, you’ll be living under difficult conditions, enduring hardships, and facing great dangers together. Your souls will be tried as by fire and you’ll be welded together, the way steel is welded.”
Yes, Jack thought now, Uncle Dan was right. We have grown closer and closer to one another. There’s Stew and Ted, Kentucky, Red, the Commander, and all the others. We’ll never forget one another. That’s one reason why I’m so eager to get back to the _Black Bee_.
Yes, he decided finally, I’ll do it, even if it does mean taking a chance. I’ll do it the first thing in the morning.
Then he awakened Stew for his watch, stretched himself out, and fell asleep at once.
He was up again before dawn. “Tell you what!” he exclaimed over a cup of coffee. “I’m going to find out who those fellows are.”
“The men with that queer plane?” Stew asked.
“Yes. We’ve got to know. They might help us get back to our ship.”
“And then again they might not—they might do just the opposite,” Stew suggested.
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. You’d better stay here and sort of look after things,” he suggested. “I may discover something big. We might want to get off this island in a hurry.”
“There’s the Jap raft, you know. It’s seaworthy. We’ve got supplies of a sort, enough to last us weeks with the birds and fish we’d catch. If it seemed the thing to do, we could slip the raft out into the current and get away rather rapidly.”