“Just enough to give some prowler a shot at us in the night,” he grumbled to himself. He wished he knew who those men were with the propellerless plane. How was he to find out? Ask the natives? But were these natives to be trusted? Missionaries had beyond a doubt been here, but they weren’t here now. “How long does it take these primitive people to drop back into their old ways?” he asked himself. But he found no answer.
“Things will work themselves out,” he reasoned hopefully.
After that he gave himself over to thoughts of the folks at home. Dad and Mom seated by the fire—Patsy in the house next door, studying perhaps, or entertaining one of the 4-H boys. How shadowy and far away it all seemed now.
He was deep in the midst of all this when suddenly, as the moon cast a patch of light on his beach and the cluster of palms not twenty yards away, he was startled by a voice at his very elbow.
Startled, but standing his ground, he gripped his automatic, then in his hoarsest whisper answered:
Jack’s conclusions regarding the _Black Bee’s_ fight with the Jap task force were correct. After he and Stew had been driven from the scene of fighting and had abandoned their plane on the sea, the U. S. dive bombers had come in for their deadly work. Diving from twelve thousand feet, they had released their bombs at a thousand feet. Some bombs missed their mark. Others made contact. One fell forward on the Jap carrier, killing a gun crew. Two fell almost directly on the propeller, rendering it useless. While the carrier ran around in wide circles, the torpedo bombers closed in. Judging the enemy’s probable position at a given moment, they released their “tin fish” with such deadly accuracy that one side of the carrier was blown away. Just as the Japs began abandoning ship, the carrier blew up.
A squadron of U. S. dive bombers that had arrived too late to work on the carrier, went after the fleeing cruisers, which did not pause to pick up their own men struggling in the water. Two cruisers were sunk, and one left in flames.
Ted had limped back to his own waters to make a crash landing in the sea close to the _Black Bee_, and to be picked up by a PT boat. All in all it was a glorious fight. One U.S. fighter and his gunner were permanently lost. They had been seen to fall flaming into the sea. A service was read for these men by the chaplain.