Chick Enders and Curly Levitt pulled Barry onto their raft.

“Great guns, Skipper!” the little bombardier exclaimed. “I never was so glad to see anything as I was to spot your headgear poking up out of that swell!”

“Chick cut our line just in time,” Curly remarked, “or the ship’s plunge would have spilled us into the pond, too. And, speaking of water, I hope we find a spring on that island when we reach it tonight. Nobody ever thought to bring along anything to drink, unless Mickey Rourke has a canteen in that bundle of his.”

“I have not!” the little gunner retorted. “Many a flier has been set adrift without water and lived to tell the tale. The small matter of a drink did not worry me. But the night before we took off from the flat-top I had a dream of floatin’ helpless on a rubber doughnut while the bloody Japs strafed me from the air. So I brought along a waterproofed tommy-gun, just in case me dream came true! Ye can laugh at me if yez feel like it, gintlemen.”

“Who wants to laugh?” Curly Levitt cried. “After this I’ll trade all my day dreams for one of your nightmares, Mickey.”

“We’re the nitwits not to think of something like that!” Barry Blake confessed. “Did you by any chance remember to put some oil and cotton waste in the same package? Our pistols could stand a cleaning now, before the salt water makes them useless.”

Rourke pulled the little oilskin-wrapped container from his bundle and handed it to Barry.

“Here it is, sir,” he said with a grin. “I’m sorry I’m not a real sleight-of-hand artist, so I could produce a glass of ice water just as easy.”

Barry’s left eyelid flickered in a mysterious wink. Pulling out his water-soaked automatic, he handed it, butt first, to the little sergeant.

“You clean my gun for me, Mickey, and I’ll produce your glass of drinking water—though it may be minus the ice. I’m afraid neither a silk hat nor a rabbit was included in this raft’s equipment, but we have something just as good.”

While the others watched, open mouthed, Barry turned to a small, waterproofed case attached to the side of the raft. Opening it he drew out an object that looked like a small alcohol stove built on futuristic lines.

“Here’s our water supply,” he said, holding it up. “You put seawater in there and a little can of fuel in here and set the thing going with a match. In an hour we’ll have a quart and a pint of pure, distilled water. Hap Newton has a gadget just like this on his raft.... What do you think of it, Hap?”

“It’s the only respectable still I ever saw,” the irrepressible co-pilot answered. “How much ‘Adam’s Ale’ will it turn out before all the fuel’s used up?”

“About fifteen pounds,” Barry stated. “One of the officers on the carrier told me each plane’s rafts were equipped with it. I just forgot to pass on the news. This still is a piece of regular Navy equipment, and so is the fishing tackle that goes with it.... Look!”

Reaching into the case again he brought out a sealed, three-pound can. Under the amazed eyes of his three companions, he opened it to show a complete fishing outfit of hooks, lines and dried bait. There was even a small steel spearhead for gaffing large fish.

“We’ll use this right away,” the young skipper declared. “Since we’re so near to land we can afford to use some of our still’s fuel to broil a tasty fish dinner. Here are three hook-and-line rigs, so it shouldn’t take us long to catch a meal.”

The castaways discovered all at once that they were ravenously hungry. With the tension of immediate danger gone, they went at the fishing with the zest of youngsters. The fish were hungry, too. Within half an hour fifteen pounds of finny food lay on the bottom of the two rafts.

The difficult job was preparing and cooking them. Barry solved the problem by cutting the fish into fillets and broiling these on the blade of one of the raft’s aluminum oars. Two cans of fuel were used for that one meal.

“We couldn’t be so wasteful, out of sight of land,” Curly Levitt observed. “We’d have to learn to eat our fish raw and like it.”

“Which might not be so hard, after all, sir,” Mickey Rourke responded. “A sailor once told me he’d drifted for three weeks on a big raft with six other lads, and eaten raw fish three times a day. They cut it thin and dried it in the sun, like herring. The sea water had salted it already. Me friend said it tasted fine.”

“Your sailor friend was spinning you a salty yarn, if you ask me,” said Chick. “What did he do when the water rations gave out?”

“Sure, that was easy!” Mickey Rourke replied. “He drank fish with his meals and was never thirsty except when it stormed for three days and the fish wouldn’t bite—”

“Haw, haw, haw!” howled Hap Newton, whose raft had drifted closer. “You bit, all right, Chick. You ought to know better than to match wits with an Irishman. So they drank more fish when they got thirsty, huh! That’s the best joke I’ve heard since I was a dodo. How about it, Barry?”

Barry Blake’s smile was not sympathetic.

“The joke’s on you, Hap!” he chuckled. “Mickey, hand me that fish we didn’t cook, and I’ll show Lieutenant Newton just what sort of a sucker he is to doubt your word.”

From the bottom of the bait can Barry took a folded square of muslin and the sharp edged spearhead. After making criss-cross cuts through each side of the five pound fish, he pulled the diced flesh from the bones and placed them in the cloth.

“Now hold the can under this muslin while we wring out a fresh fish cocktail, Mickey,” he directed.

From the cloth, strongly twisted by Barry and the little sergeant, a stream of watery liquid dribbled into the bait can. When no more would come, Barry threw out the squeezed fish meat and put in more diced pieces. The final result was half a cupful of fish juice.

“It’s drinkable,” the young skipper declared after the first taste, “just as that naval officer on the flat-top told me it would be. There’s practically no salt taste, and it’s not as strong of fish as you’d imagine. Who wants to hint that Sergeant Mickey Rourke is a liar, now?”

Hap Newton shook his head solemnly.

“I take it all back, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll never doubt your word again, Mickey, unless I see you wink behind my back. But please don’t ask me to guzzle your fish cocktail while I have a perfectly good still to make my own moonshine water. Pass me a match, Fred, and let’s get the thing started. I want to wet my whistle before Crayle, here, wakes up and demands a fresh water bath.”

While their water stills boiled, the two raft crews began paddling toward the island. Their progress was less than a mile an hour, but that did not bother them. With darkness still several hours away, they dared not approach too near.

“The moon rises early tonight,” Curly Levitt informed his friends. “If we’re within two miles of land then, we should be able to see the shore line. The cloud ceiling isn’t so thick that it will shut out all the light.”

As a matter of fact, the clouds thinned as evening approached. A stiff breeze sprang up, drifting the rafts so rapidly toward land that the paddles were no longer needed. As the last daylight faded a faint glow above the eastern horizon told that the moon was up.

The rafts had been tied together all afternoon, to avoid drifting too far apart. Now, with paddles plying steadily, they were making good headway toward the dark line of jungle that marked the island. Barry Blake, in the leading “doughnut,” strained his ears for any sound of breakers that would indicate a dangerous landing place. There was none—only the rhythmical roaring of the surf on the smooth beach, and the slap-slap-slap of water against the rafts’ flat bottoms.

They were a hundred yards from the head of a little cove when the clouds thinned enough to show the moon. For five short seconds the light was fairly clear. A scudding cloud mass dimmed it, but not before Barry had glimpsed a long, black shape moving out from shore.

“Stop paddling!” the young skipper whispered. “Pass the word to Hap’s raft.... There’s a boat putting out from the beach—due to pass us within a few yards. Have your guns ready if it spots us, and keep your heads down.”

“Sure, I knew me little tommy-gun would come in handy, Lieutenant,” Mickey Rourke muttered. “I’ll take the oilskin bag off and be ready when yez say, ‘Open fire!’”

Tense moments passed. A patch of darkness blacker than the surrounding water moved into Barry’s range of vision. Mickey had seen it, too. He snuggled lower in the raft, the stock of his weapon tight against his shoulder.

Abruptly a high-pitched, chattering voice broke out in the oncoming boat. Barry felt Sergeant Rourke stiffen beside him, waiting the word to fire. But that word was never given. A girl’s voice spoke from the darkness in clear American.

“Quiet, Nanu!” it said. “That’s not a Jap boat, unless it’s upside down. Paddle closer and we’ll look the thing over.”

Gusty sighs of relief went up from the bomber’s crew.

“A girl! From the States!” they chorused.

“So they want to look us over,” remarked Fred Marmon’s voice sententiously. “Well, I’m a monkey’s uncle!”

Feminine laughter pealed in the darkness. There were two women in the strange boat and at least one white man, to judge by the voices. Barry thought, however, that he could distinguish other figures.

“We’re the crew of an American bomber, forced down by lack of fuel this afternoon,” he explained. “We nearly turned a sub-machine gun on you people a minute ago, thinking you were Japs. If we hadn’t heard one of the ladies speak—”

“That was Dora Wilcox,” another girl broke in. “She and her father had a mission station here; and I’d just come out to join my father at his cocoanut plantation when the Japs came. We’ve been hiding from them ever since. The little brutes caught and killed Reverend Wilcox only last week. I’m Claire Barrows, and my father is here beside me.”

“We had a hard time persuading Miss Wilcox to come with us,” a man’s voice added. “She wanted to stay with the native converts until they themselves urged her to leave. The Japs are due to occupy this island in force at any time.”

“Nanu and Kari Luva and their wives decided to escape with us in their catamaran,” Dora Wilcox chimed in. “Why don’t you people join us? This craft is really too heavy for three men and four women to paddle, and we’re well stocked with water and food. I’m sure that Providence brought us together—and kept you from shooting us in the dark.”

There was no resisting the girl’s logic. Barry Blake quickly introduced his crew by name as they lifted Crayle into the native boat. He himself came aboard last, carrying his precious still and fishing tackle. The two rubber rafts were left to float ashore and mystify any Jap patrol that might find them.

Dora Wilcox, he soon discovered, was the real leader of the refugees. The four natives showed a childlike devotion to her. Even Clarke Barrows, the middle-aged plantation owner, deferred to the girl’s opinion. Barry Blake found himself consumed with curiosity to see the face of this young person who planned like a general and thought of everybody else before herself.

Dora Wilcox’s hope was to sail the entire three hundred miles to Australia. She had brought palm fiber mats to cover the catamaran during the day and make it appear abandoned. The mats would serve the double purpose of camouflage and shade. At night the sail would be raised. With a favorable wind, she told Barry, the double-dugout craft could travel as much as eighty miles between dusk and dawn.

The young Fortress skipper glanced up at the scudding clouds. Weather, he realized, would have a great deal to do with the success or failure of their escape. Without a keel the catamaran would make a lot of leeway. If the wind held from the northeast, it could easily blow them ashore on a Jap occupied island. The wisest plan would be to get as far to windward as they could before dawn.

“Let us take the paddles, Miss Wilcox,” he said. “My crew will relieve your native boys until it’s time to hoist sail. Then perhaps we can figure out a way to beat the leeward drift.”

“We’re at your orders from now on, Lieutenant,” the girl replied. “None of us is a navigator. If an American bomber crew can’t take us through, no human power could do it.”

The seven airmen fell to work with a will and a weight of muscle that sent the thirty-foot boat lightly over the swells. At midnight, when the sky cleared, they were well out of sight of land. Now for the first time the bomber team had a chance to see their companions’ faces.

In the moonlight neither of the white girls looked more than eighteen or twenty years old. Claire Barrows had her father’s wide mouth and turned-up nose, and a smile that was decidedly attractive. Dora smiled less often, and her features were more finely chiseled. She wore her long hair in braids wound about her head. Her calm, efficient, thoughtful personality could be read at a glance. Somehow she made Barry’s pulse beat faster than any girl had done before.

The two native couples were quite young, in their ’teens or early twenties. As they sat relaxed, balancing with the boat’s dip and sway, their shapely black bodies would have thrilled any sculptor. Barry could imagine what capture by the Japs would mean to these children of nature—slavery, degradation, living death!

The thought made him fiercely determined to outwit the enemy, to bring all these people through the gantlet of Jap boats, planes, and shore patrols. Thirteen persons now depended largely on him as their skipper. He must find some means of covering those three hundred miles to Australia in a shorter time.

“I have it!” he exclaimed aloud. “We’ll use the paddles in place of a centerboard. Is there any rope handy, Dora?”

“Plenty,” replied the girl. “But what do you mean by using paddles for a centerboard, Lieutenant?”

“I’ll show you,” the young skipper smiled, looking straight into her eyes. “But please leave off the handle and call me Barry, won’t you?”

“All right,” Dora Wilcox answered, with a twinkle in her eyes. “It’s easier to say.... Oh, Nanu! Hand me that coil of rope you’re sitting on.”

With the help of his crew, Barry tied four of the native paddles at intervals between the catamaran’s twin floats. The broad wooden blades, thrust deep in the water, acted like a keel. Now the wind pushing on the sail would not drift the craft sidewise. Already equipped with a steering oar, the awkward-looking boat was now as manageable as a catboat.

As the single, lanteen-type sail went up, water boiled white under the double bow. The catamaran was gathering speed.

“Splendid!” cried Claire Barrows. “All we need now is a chart and a compass to set the course. Which way is Port Darwin, anyway, Lieutenant Newton?”

“I’ll be just plain ‘Hap’ to you, if you want me to live up to my nickname,” the big co-pilot retorted. “When it comes to finding directions, Curly Levitt is the lad to consult. He carries a compass in his head, I think!”

“I have one in my pocket, which is a lot better,” Curly spoke up. “And I stuffed a chart of these islands under my shirt when the plane was forced down. With that equipment I can keep track of our course by dead reckoning. It will be pretty crude, without a log to check the knots we’re making, but at least we won’t miss the broadside of Australia!”