Dave Dawson on Guadalcanal Part 14

"Whoa, pal!" he cried. "That clout on the head _did_ send you spinning.

Take it easy, kid!"

"Take it easy, nothing!" Freddy replied hotly. "I _could_, Dave. And if you'd used your eyes, you'd have learned what I did!"

"The--the location of Suicide's force?" Dawson asked incredulously.

"Exactly!" Freddy told him firmly. "At least what it was at ten o'clock this morning. It was One Hundred and Forty degrees West, and Five degrees North. I saw the position marked on the desk chart in that n.a.z.i's cabin. And do you know what _that_ means, Dave?"

"Well, I'll be a bowlegged son of a gun!" Dawson gulped out in awed admiration. "Kid Bright Eyes to the rescue again. Boy! I sure hand it to you when it comes to coming through in the clinches! Just like that he learns what Admiral Jackson's whole force wants to know. Holy smokes!"

"And a fine lot of good it does me to know, locked up in this blasted steel closet!" Freddy Farmer groaned. "But I asked you, do you know what that means? Do you happen to know where One Forty West and Five North happens to be?"

"Huh?" Dawson echoed. "Where?"

"I noticed it on the chart, of course," Freddy replied. "It happens to be a good hundred miles _west_ of the area our planes have been searching. In other words, Colonel Welsh and Admiral Jackson are not going to find the j.a.ps in the area they're searching. Sasebo is well west of them. So he didn't go south, as was reported. He moved west from Truk for almost five hundred miles and _then_ turned south. And as of ten o'clock this morning he was heading for j.a.p-held New Guinea. And--"

"Jumping jeepers!" Dawson broke in with a gasp. "So that's it? He's going to slip through between New Guinea and New Britain and catch our attacking force on Guadalca.n.a.l from the south? Cut our supply lines to shreds, and then follow through with a main attack on whatever our boys have gained. Good night! That'll be a heck of a note, Freddy!"

"Quite, and definitely!" the English youth replied with a faint tremor in his voice. "Either that, or he'll go all the way around the western end of New Guinea, and split his forces. Half to cut off our forces on Guadalca.n.a.l, and half to make a sea and air attack against perhaps Darwin on the northern side of Australia. Who knows _what_ that cunning devil has up his sleeve? And to think we know where his confounded force is! Man! I could shoot myself in despair!"

"Here, cut that out, pal!" Dave snapped. "Get that old chin up. We're still alive, and that's something."

"You wouldn't care to tell me how much, would you?" the English youth grunted.

"No, I guess not," Dawson said with a chuckle. "But you get the idea just the same. But, boy, oh boy! If we only could get word to Colonel Welsh and Admiral Jackson. Darn it, Freddy! We've got to, somehow. We've just got to!"

"No doubt of it," Freddy mumbled gloomily in the darkness. "But how?

That's the stickler, old thing. _How?_"

"I don't know," Dawson murmured. "But maybe we'll get some kind of a break. If we don't, we'll just have to make one, that's all. This j.a.p rat who shot us down, I wonder how he figures to fly us to Suicide's force?"

"That one is easy," Freddy Farmer sighed. "You'll see. Tied hand and foot, and jammed down into the rear pit of that seaplane like a couple of sardines, I fancy. No, I don't think I'm looking forward to that particular airplane ride."

"Yeah, like a couple of helpless sardines, probably," Dave murmured.

"Yes, I guess I can think of more comfortable flights I've had, too.

Oh, well, a guy can always hope."

And with that listless comment Dave lapsed into brooding silence, and Freddy Farmer joined him. For quite some time neither of them spoke.

What was there to say, anyway? What was there to say that hadn't already been spoken? Absolutely nothing. And so it was better just to sit and keep one's thoughts to oneself. What the future would bring it would bring, and that was that!

After a long, long spell of mutual silence a sudden change in the movement of the U-boat told them both that the undersea craft was going up to the surface. Dawson grunted and sat up a little straighter.

"Up we go," he grunted. "So things will be happening soon."

"Can't say I'd be mad if said things were bombs dropping on this thing from a chance plane or two of ours!" Freddy Farmer growled. "The way I feel right now, I don't think I'd mind at all. Oh, blast it! I guess that gun slap from that j.a.p rotter did do something to my nerve. I feel in an awful funk, Dave."

"Swell, perfect, pal!" Dave said with a chuckle. "Keep right on feeling that way, and everything will be okay."

"Not much it will!" the English youth grated. "And what the deuce do you mean by that crack, anyway?"

"I mean that I've seen you like this before, and plenty!" Dawson told him, and squeezed his arm in the darkness. "And those other times you just hauled back and knocked 'em high, wide and handsome. So it's okay by me, kid. Very much okay. You'll get us some action, if I don't."

"Thanks, old thing," Freddy said with a faint huskiness in his voice.

"And I am a rotter to try and drag you down, too. Sorry no end, Dave.

I'll try and buck up and not be such a wet wack."

"Wet _smack!_" Dave corrected with a laugh. "Holy smokes! Aren't you ever going to learn to speak the language, huh?"

The English youth grunted, but before he could make any reply to that there came the final lurching motion as the U-boat broke surface, and even in their steel-walled prison they could hear the sounds of feverish activity. A moment or two later they could tell that the U-boat was motionless on the surface. And then more sounds, the whine and grind of turning gears, caused them to guess that the small seaplane was being hoisted up out of its hold hangar.

Suddenly, Dave began to chuckle softly. And Freddy Farmer peered at him in the darkness.

"What's wrong with you, Dave?" he asked, "What's so blasted funny?"

"I was just thinking," Dawson replied. "Remember that stuffed shirt ground major at the Broome field in Australia?"

"The one whose feet you dusted off with the prop-wash of the plane?" the English youth echoed. "Yes, I remember him. What about him?"

"I was just thinking," Dave said. "Maybe I gave that chump the right tip after all. Maybe he went dancing into his C.O.'s office with the real dope, and got tossed out for pa.s.sing around such a c.o.c.keyed rumor."

"Yes, maybe you did at that," Freddy Farmer said soberly. "If Suicide Sasebo does strike at Australia, you will have given the tip-off days in advance, only you didn't know it. But I can't see anything to laugh about!"

"Okay, sober sides, I guess you're right," Dawson muttered. "But I sure could do with a good laugh, right about now. I--Oh-oh! I suspect here comes company. Watch it, Freddy. And hang on hard, pal."

"Right-o, Dave!" the English youth breathed. "Be right in there with you, old thing."

Freddy had hardly got the words off his lips when a key grated in the door lock and the door was kicked open with a crash. Pale light instantly poured into the room, and for a moment Dave and Freddy could see only blurred silhouettes in the companionway outside. Presently their eyes focussed to the change of light and they saw the j.a.p naval officer and two j.a.p seamen leering at them. The officer was dressed for flying. In his hand he carried his ever present gun. And each of the sailors carried a coil of thin, tough line.

"Turn around, and face the other way!" the j.a.p officer suddenly hissed at them.

For a split second the two youths hesitated as red waves of rebellion surged up in them. But in that same split second they realized that any show of resistance would be the same as putting a gun to their heads and pulling the trigger. They were as helpless as a couple of caged sparrows, and to do anything about it would be plain, downright stupidity. And so they slowly turned around and suffered themselves to be trussed up hand and foot by the two j.a.p sailors.

And suffer they did, in every sense of the word. It was a joy to those two sons of heathens to have the opportunity to tie up two white men, and they went about their tasks with savage glee. And the j.a.p officer, standing to one side with his gun ready, took almost as much joy in the operations as they did. For Dawson and Freddy Farmer it was terrible torture to both mind and soul. The loops of the thin, tough line were yanked so tight that they felt like cords of white fire burning into their flesh. Then long before the two j.a.p seamen had completed the job the feeling of burning bands of white fire disappeared. There was just a dull, throbbing numbness in their legs and in their arms. And as the final fiendish touch the end of the line was looped about their necks, and drawn back tight and tied so that every time they moved their heads the loop bit into their throats and choked off their wind.

Finally, through the pounding in his ears, Dawson heard the j.a.p officer scream something in his native tongue. Then he felt himself being lifted up and slung across one of the j.a.ps' shoulders like a sack of wet meal.

And he could not keep track of just exactly what happened after that.

All the bombs in the world were exploding in his brain. His lungs were on fire, and his thumping heart was pounding its way out through his ribs. He seemed to lose control of the movement of his eyeb.a.l.l.s. They kept rolling back up into his brain, and vision was impossible.

Everything was just a surging ocean of red waves. In a crazy abstract sort of way he wondered if he had lost consciousness. He decided he hadn't, otherwise he wouldn't be thinking such a jumble of thoughts.

Then, suddenly, instinct told him that he was falling. He tried to cry out in alarm, but there was no sound of his own voice in his ringing ears. There was just the wild, angry jabbering of j.a.panese. A tiny thought whipped through his brain to tell him that his j.a.p seaman had missed his footing and was lunging downward. And the instinct of self-preservation caused him to strain at his bonds. And that was the very last thing he remembered. The whole world blew up in that instant and he went sailing off into a great void of utter silence and darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_Haywire Nerves_