in the meantime jack had decided on a bold stroke. he was not sure that at this time it was a wise thing to do, but his burning desire to make his way back to the carrier and resume his post of duty there had all but driven him to it.
as he paced back and forth on the beach, guarding camp and wondering about his strange night visitor, he recalled the words of his uncle dan who had fought in the first world war:
“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.
106
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.
107
“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.”
“get off?” stew stared. “yes, but how?”
“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.”
“i suppose so,” stew agreed.
jack stood up. should he tell stew of the night visitor? after a moment’s thought he decided against that.
a half hour later, after hurrying over the native trail, he found himself slipping silently through the brush toward the camp of the strangers. “i’ll just look before i show myself,” he whispered to the empty air.
all of a sudden he stopped to listen. a low, whispering wail had reached his ear.
“too late.” his hopes fell. “they’re off.” yet as he listened the wail died away.
108
“probably testing their motors,” he assumed. once more he crept through the brush. three times the wail rose and fell, but he pushed straight on until the smoke from a campfire told him he was close to the edge of the tangled mass of palms and tropical brush beside the strangers’ camp.
choosing a young date palm, whose fronds sprouted close to the ground, he crept to it and crouched there a minute. rising to his knees, he parted the slender fronds to look away to the sloping rock.
the mysterious plane was some distance away. the two men talked and laughed while they refueled the plane. the language they spoke seemed strange to jack, though he was too far away to understand what they said, even if they had spoken english.
“wish i hadn’t come,” he observed. then, “but i really must know about them. no sense beating about the bush.”
the men ceased laughing. the sound of their words changed. one of them climbed to the plane’s cockpit. the motor howled once more. so loud was its final scream that it hurt jack’s ears. then it faded away.
“they’ll be off in a minute,” he breathed, rising to his feet. “it’s now or—”
109
no. he settled back. the man on the rock hurried away.
“oh jerry!” the one in the plane called in perfect english. “bring an alligator wrench.”
jack heaved a sigh of relief. so they spoke english! they must be okay. at that he stepped boldly out from the brush and walked straight toward the plane. the man in the cockpit was bent over working on something. he did not raise his head until jack was within three yards of the plane. when he did look up, he started at the sight of jack. his figure stiffened. his right hand dropped.
“stand where you are!” he commanded. “who are you? what do you want? and how did you come here?” the man spoke with a decided accent.
“my uniform should tell you what i am,” jack replied evenly.
“in war, uniforms mean nothing!” the man snapped. his gray eyes matched the gray of the bushy hair about his temples. he was no longer young. between his eyes were two lines that told of work and strain.
“i’m sorry.” jack apologized. “i had no intention of startling you. i’m an american fighter pilot, whether you believe it or not. i was shot down nearly two days ago and floated ashore here.”
110
“that’s okay, son.” the man’s smile was not unfriendly. his accent, jack thought, made him english or australian. “we have to be careful, that’s all. this plane is a secret weapon.”
“it must be,” jack grinned. “i never before saw one that burned kerosene, had no propeller, and yet went like the wind.”
“of course not,” the man admitted. “there aren’t a dozen of them in the world.”
“may i look at it?” jack took a step forward.
“not a glance. stay where you are.” the man’s lips formed a straight line. “we’re not allowed to show anything. in fact, you’re too close right now.”
“oh, that’s all right.” jack stepped back. “i’m just naturally curious.”
“oh, sure.” the man smiled again. “wait. i’ll climb down and we’ll have a cup of coffee. my partner’s gone for some tools. the hiding place is quite a distance away, just in case.”
“i see,” said jack. “just in case the japs happen along.”
“something like that,” the man agreed. he took a step down, then paused. “you might be wondering how we got our supply of kerosene in here right under the japs’ noses,” he suggested.
“it does seem odd,” jack agreed.
111
“it happens to have been here,” the stranger went on. to his own surprise jack found himself wondering if the man was telling him the truth or raising a smoke screen of falsehood.
“you see, my partner and i once had trading concessions on some of these islands. the japs forced us off, but before they did that we hid our fuel. thought we might want to come back, which we did. but we hardly expected to come in a craft like this.” he laughed softly.
the man climbed down, poured two cups of hot black coffee from a gallon thermos jug, then invited jack to a seat on a large flat rock.
“so you like our little ship!” the man said, warmed by the coffee. “it’s really a honey. nothing in the world was ever like it.”
“it sure walks on air,” jack agreed.
“so you’ve seen it fly?” he gave jack a sharp look.
“yes.” jack told of seeing it leave the island.
“you’d like to know a lot about it?” the man smiled.
“naturally.”
“some things i can’t tell you. all i can tell you has been printed in magazines all over the world. strange you haven’t read them.”
“we’ve been at sea for a long time.”
“yes, of course.” the man appeared to have accepted jack’s story as true. “and the facts about our jet plane haven’t been out very long.”
112
“jet plane? is that what you call it?” jack studied the plane with redoubled interest.
“that’s what it is. it gets its power from jets of air mixed with exploding gas. the jets come out from some part of the plane. i’m not permitted to tell exactly what part. you’ve often watered a lawn, i suppose?”
“yes, quite often.”
“remember how the hose sort of kicked back when the water came rushing out?”
“sure,” jack grinned. “i’ve been soaked more than once by just that.”
“that’s the sort of thing that makes our ship go. the jets come out at great speed and just push the plane along. it practically flies itself.”
“how about taking me along on your next flight?” jack held his breath.
“impossible. we can’t take a soul on board. no, not even if he were wounded and would die if we left him. it’s that much of a secret. so much—so very much depends upon this plane.
“but i’ll tell you a little more about it,” the man went on, sensing jack’s disappointment. “it burns kerosene. you’ve noticed that, i suppose?”
“yes.”
113
“it’s hard on fuel. we have to carry a belly tank if we want to go far. the italians made a plane somewhat like this one. but it just ate up the fuel. if you’ve got to land every half hour for fuel, your plane’s no good. we’ve overcome that. but this plane still has weak spots.”
jack wondered what the weak spots were, but dared not ask. “should be fine in the stratosphere,” he suggested.
“say! you do know planes, don’t you?” the man answered with respect in his tone.
“a little,” jack admitted.
“of course it’s good in the stratosphere. that’s where a propeller-driven plane breaks down.”
“nothing for the propeller to get its teeth into,” suggested jack.
“that’s right. but our baby here goes fastest when there’s the thinnest sort of air in front of her to create friction. five hundred miles an hour? say! that’s nothing!”
jack stared at the plane with sheer admiration.
suddenly jerry, the stranger’s partner, came up with an alligator wrench in his hand.
“got to get busy and step out on the air.” with that jack’s newly found friend was gone, just like that. nor did he return. not five minutes had passed when the mystery plane let out the squeal of an expiring porker, lifted its voice to the pitch of a fire siren, started to glide, touched the sea, cast back a spray, then was in the air and flew swiftly away.
jack had searched for the plane to make whatever discovery he could concerning it, but he was not sure that he had accomplished anything.
