It was the cold water that brought Scoot to his senses, cold water creeping up over his chest. When he felt it, he scrambled forward, but fell back in his seat at once. The arm he had reached out to pull himself up with would not work. It hung limp at his side. He glanced down and saw blood streaming from it.

“Got to do something about that!” he muttered dazedly. “Anyway, it worked. He thought he hit me. I did a nice slow spinning dive. He thought he’d got the pilot and the plane just went out of control, fell into a natural slow spin. And did I keep it slow! He must have thought it was funny when I pulled out of it just over the water, but I didn’t make it look too good. Couldn’t. But I’d slowed her down plenty, then put her into a stall and let her flop back tail first.”

The water was creeping higher as Scoot sat there thinking of what had just happened. Then he shook himself to clear his head, reached up with his good arm and pulled himself forward. The door of the cockpit was already wrenched half off, so Scoot crawled out easily enough. But then he slipped and fell into the water.

The shock revived him a little more so that he grabbed one pontoon. Slowly and painfully he pulled himself up on it. Then he looked up into the sky. Far to the west he saw the dot that was the Jap pursuit ship heading back to its convoy. Scoot smiled weakly.

“He thinks he’s killed an American flier,” he mumbled. “He doesn’t know how hard that is to do.”

The plane was not sinking any further. Its tail and most of the fuselage were covered but the nose and wings and pontoons were above the surface.

“Only one pontoon busted,” Scoot told himself. “The other’s holding us up—that and the wing tanks that are almost empty.”

Then he saw his broken arm again. He had to stop that flow of blood. He wriggled forward a little on the sloping pontoon so that he could wrap his legs around the brace leading from it to the plane’s fuselage. Then he used his good left arm to rip off most of one side of his shirt. Holding one end of the strip in his teeth, he wound the cloth around the bad arm above the break, making it as tight as he could. It slipped a little as he tied it, but it was fairly tight. The flow of blood did not stop, but it was greatly reduced.

“Don’t know how much longer I can keep my strength,” he said to himself. “Better make myself fast somehow.”

Slowly he struggled out of his trousers, after taking the waterproof pouch with the convoy information and putting it in his money belt. Next he tied himself to the strut with the legs of his trousers. Then he sat, looking eastward in the direction from which Kamongo must come.

“I’m not quite as far as I ought to be,” he thought, feeling consciousness leaving him. “They’ll probably go right under me.”

It was there that March found him. He had brought Kamongo to the surface a short distance before the spot agreed upon for the meeting. But there had been no sign of Scoot. Keeping steadily ahead on course, March had ordered all men to stay below at their stations except for himself and the controlman on the bridge. They were riding the vents, with main ballast tanks open, and air vents at the top closed. The water rushed in to fill part of the tanks, but not all of them, because of the air trapped inside. That still allowed Kamongo enough buoyancy to keep on the surface, but not at full speed. All that was needed for a dive was the opening of the air vents at the top of the ballast tanks. That might save twenty seconds in the diving operations and twenty seconds might make all the difference in the world.

March had looked frantically over the sea when they reached the designated spot. Still no sign of Scoot. And no report from the radio.

“Something happened!” he muttered to himself. “Something happened!”

So he continued on the surface—mile after mile beyond the assigned spot, in danger every minute from enemy planes that might sight him. Still no word over the radio.

He was just about to give up and order the ship to submerge when he saw the dot on the sea ahead. He was ready for a dive at any moment—but it might be Scoot instead of an enemy craft. So he stayed on the surface, and looked, looked, looked as they came nearer. Then he saw it was a plane, crashed in a crazy position. He ordered main ballasts pumped and full speed ahead. Next he ordered men up to man the guns in case this should prove some trick of the enemy’s.

But long before they reached the plane they knew what it was. When they were still some distance away, they saw the figure on one of the pontoons. As they neared the plane, men were ready with a collapsible boat. Quickly they rowed to the plane, lifted Scoot into the rocking boat and took him back to the submarine. Lifting him up to the conning tower, they heard him mumble something. He reached the bridge just in time to have March lean close to his lips and hear, “Money belt—convoy.”

In another minute Scoot was below in March’s bunk and Sallini was hovering over him. And March was looking at the chart and the information about the big Jap convoy. He rushed to the interphone.

“We’ve found it!” he called to all hands. “Scoot Bailey found it. We’re radioing headquarters, then going in to attack.”

There was a whoop of joy throughout the ship. This was what they came out in pigboats for—to find a flock of Jap ships and send them to the bottom!

Quickly March gave details in code to Scotty at the radio and soon the message was flashing out over the water. In a moment there would be action on submarines, at airfields, in navy bases to the south and east where the Americans were waiting for just this news.

Then March took the ship down and they moved forward on a new course, planned to bring them to the convoy at the earliest possible moment. March figured it would take about two hours. By that time other ships and subs would be on their way, and planes would be roaring overhead soon after he reached the Jap ships.

He went in to Scoot and found Sallini smiling.

“He’ll be fine,” the pharmacist said. “Broken right arm, bad jagged cut severing the artery. But we’ve got the blood flow stopped now, got the wound clean and dressed. He’s had some blood plasma and I’ll keep giving him more as long as he needs it. He lost plenty of blood, but he’ll be okay fast.”

“Nothing besides the arm?” March asked.

“Just some cuts around the head and one leg,” Sallini said. “Nothing serious. And exhaustion, too, but we can pull him out of that fast. He ought to be talking in a few hours and walking in a few days.”

“How’s the Skipper?” March asked.

“Still unconscious. Fever high but receding a little bit. Maybe he’ll make it.”

“Here I am going into battle with my Skipper and my best friend out cold!” March exclaimed.

“You’ve got the whole crew with you, sir,” the pharmacist said. “Every man of ’em. Let’s get in the middle of that bunch of Jap ships and blast the daylights out of ’em!”

Tension began to rise in the boat as they neared the convoy, traveling at a hundred and fifty feet where no shadow of a sub would be likely to be seen from the air. March got on the phone and told all hands the plan of attack, not minimizing the dangers.

“We’re going into the middle,” March said. “Alone. It was the Skipper’s plan. We’ll be the first there, and we’re to scatter them so the planes will find easy pickings and the other subs can pick them off as they scamper away. We’ll have all tubes ready to go at just about the same time—six fore and four aft. Then we’ll duck for all we’re worth and we’ll go mighty deep and lay low.”

There was another shout through the ship and the men stood eagerly at their posts. And then came waiting, tense waiting, as the ship moved forward. Men had a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette, walked back and forth nervously. But they did little talking. They were waiting, listening.

Finally the sound man picked up something.

“Propellers,” he said, “plenty of them—ten degrees to port.”

“Take her to two hundred feet,” March ordered, and then gave a slight change in course to the helmsman.

“We’ll get right in their path and lay low without motors running. The sound detectors on the advance destroyers won’t catch us, then. When they’ve passed over we can pick up motors again because their own propellers will kill all the sound ours make. We’ll come up in about the middle, pick our spot and let go. I’ll want the periscope up for just about five seconds.”

The boat leveled off at two hundred and fifty feet. Motors were shut off. Soon the sound man reported the close approach of the propellers. March had judged right—they were passing overhead.

“Destroyer a little to starboard, passing over,” the soundman reported.

“Another to port,” he reported in a moment. Then, a little later, “Battleship.”

“Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to get that?” murmured one of the men.

“Nice, yes,” March replied. “But that wouldn’t do the job for the other boys that we’re going to do. We’ll let one of the Forts get that battleship. We’ll just send it running.”

The men nodded in agreement. They knew the Skipper’s plan was best.

Ship after ship passed over as there was silence in the submarine. Then March spoke.

“Come up to seventy-five feet now. They can’t hear.”

The motors whined again and the sub tilted up slightly. Everyone watched the depth hand move to seventy-five and stay there. The sound man continued to report propellers overhead. March figured that they must be getting near the center of the convoy.

“Say, here’s something!” the sound man exclaimed. There was complete silence as he listened more intently. “That’s a carrier or I’m a monkey!”

“This is our spot!” March said quietly. Then he spoke over the phone to the entire ship. “We’ve found our spot. Right by a carrier.”

There were a few cries of pleasure, but most of the men were too excited to shout. March gave the order to bring the boat up to periscope depth, standing by the shaft ready to grab it.

As the ship leveled off he cried, “Up ’scope” and the big shaft slid upward. March grabbed the handles and had his eyes in place in a fraction of a second. All the others watched him intently. He swung the ’scope a little to the left, then to the right. His voice came sharply then, giving the target setting for the forward tubes—all six of them. The men knew that was for the carrier.

Then March swung the ’scope clear around a hundred and eighty degrees and focused. “Troopship!” he called, and then gave the target setting to be relayed to the after torpedo room.

“Down ’scope!” he called. “Stand by to fire!”

The shaft slid down. Everyone in the boat knew that the periscope might have been seen even in those few seconds it was up, even though most lookouts on the convoy were keeping their eyes chiefly on the seas beyond the group of ships. The sound man would know if a destroyer came racing toward them. But March was not going to wait.

“Fire one!” McFee pressed the button that fired number one torpedo.

“Fire two!” The second one shot from the bow.

“Fire three! Fire four! Fire five! Fire six!”

In rapid order the commands came, then everyone waited tensely. March looked at his watch, counting off the seconds. Then it came—the roar, the shock of an explosion, and the mighty cheer that tore through the throats of every man on Kamongo. The first torpedo had struck home, but at that moment March called out, “Fire seven! Fire eight! Fire nine! Fire ten!” And during those commands the men heard further explosions from the first torps that had gone streaking out.

March had not been able to count how many had come, but he knew that McFee had done so. But now all were waiting for the first sounds from the aft tubes. In a moment it came—the first torpedo against the troopship, and March waited no longer.

“Take her down!” he cried. “Three hundred feet!”