Sinking barges drifted aimlessly, filled with dead men. Some of the soldiers jumped overboard, only to die in the water. Curly Levitt with his side-gun mowed down the one bargeful that made the beach. After that run, Barry did not turn his ship until well beyond the range of Jap shell fire. At ten thousand feet he swung back. The three Jap transports were much farther apart. The nearest one was drifting and burning more fiercely than ever. The others were zig-zagging. A sudden sheet of flame shot up from the drifting vessel. In a space of seconds her superstructure went to pieces. “She’s done for,” Chick Enders said. “Give me a run on the farthest one, Skipper. I’ll try to drop an egg right down her stack.” “Hap and I will do what we can to help you,” Barry answered, “at ten thousand feet. We have those last two ships in the bag. There’s no need to risk _Rosy O’Grady_ at point-blank range.” Chick’s first attempt was a near miss—the Jap helmsman was too good at dodging. On his run over the second transport he scored a hit. The five-hundred-pound bomb struck her stern, crippling her steering gear. “Nice work, bombardier!” Barry applauded. “Now we can concentrate on the last target.” A shell burst from the stricken craft slammed chunks of jagged metal through _Rosy’s_ tail assembly. The big bomber lurched. “Tail gunner from pilot:” Barry spoke into the phone. “Are you all right?” “That flak missed the turret, sir,” Tony Romani answered. “But I can see daylight through the fuselage just behind me.” “The rudder and elevators still work,” Barry told his crew. “That’s as near a hit as I want, though. Let’s get this job done.” On his next run Chick Enders accomplished the nearly-impossible. His bomb plunged down the transport’s stack and exploded in her bowels. The Jap ship simply crumpled up and sank, like an old tin can. The one ship left afloat was burning fiercely from stem to stern. No boats or barges had been lowered. Those Japs who had survived the flames were now swimming in the shark-infested water. “Here come three of our forts from Mau River!” Hap Newton cried, pointing to the east. “Boy! Will they be sore when they see what we’ve left!” “Just a few bones on a broken platter!” Barry exulted. “We had all the cold turkey and cranberry sauce. Switch over to the radio and let’s hear what they’re saying, Soapy!” Few of the other crew’s comments were cheerful, but Barry soothed their disappointment. “You might possibly find a force of Jap warships farther up the coast, sir,” he told the commanding officer, Major Browne. “My guess is that they were landing troops for a night attack on our airport. In that case they’d be expecting some naval units to come after dark and ‘soften up’ the field for them with shell fire.” “That’s good reasoning, Lieutenant Blake,” the major agreed. “We’ll search the coast toward Point D’Urville. _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ looks to me as if she needs a little patching before she goes hunting more trouble.”