“Harrumph! I envy them!” grunted the colonel. “Couldn’t sleep at all myself, last night.... But I have good news for you, Blake. Your ship has passed every quick test for serious damage, and except for the holes that there wasn’t time to patch, she’s fit to fly. That damaged machine gun in the nose has been replaced. She’s been bombed up and serviced. I’m counting on her—and you men—to give the Japs a very special pasting today.” “We’ll do that, sir, and—er—thank you for giving us so much of your time and thought,” Barry responded. “Are we taking off with the squadron this time?” “Yes. Extreme right wing position,” Colonel Bullock told him. “The take-off is in thirty minutes.” Barry saluted and watched the officer’s tall, still youthful figure stride away in the twilight. Behind him the crew were piling out of the tent. “Just time to eat and run, fellows,” he said, turning toward the mess shack. “The squadron takes off at six.” * * * * * Clear sunlight gleamed through the bottle-green crests of the big combers that tossed and battered the Jap task force. Gone was the protecting blanket of clouds. Gone, too, was any hope in the mind of the Jap admiral that he could sneak up on the Allied bases without a costly attack from the air. Yet his words were confident as he issued his orders to the flotilla. A second convoy of fourteen vessels had joined his ten during the night. With their added strength he felt certain of success. “Inform the honorable captains that they will close the intervals between their ships to five hundred yards,” he told his chief executive officer. “Our massed antiaircraft, plus the umbrella of our land-based fighter planes, will beat off any air attack our enemies may make. In fact, we shall utterly destroy them.” The executive bowed and hissed politely. “We shall destroy them utterly,” he repeated. “Banzai!” Green water crashed on the forecastle as the flagship buried her bow under a giant comber. The cruiser shuddered, heaved, and shook herself free. The bow rose higher, higher, until the steel warship seemed to those on deck as if she were going to stand upright on her propellers. Again her foredeck dipped, rolled, plunged into the trough of a mighty sea. The antiaircraft crews balanced themselves calmly on sea-trained legs. Their eyes never left the reeling sky above them. They breathed deeply, fingering the cold steel of their weapons, waiting for the targets they knew would soon appear. It was a different story below the wave-washed decks of the troop transport ships. There, packed in the stifling holds like sardines, eighteen thousand Jap infantrymen gagged and groaned. The throes of seasickness gripped officers and men alike. It was not deadly, they had been told, but it made them long for death. Only their inbred habit of obedience had kept them from shooting themselves or committing _hara kiri_ through the past week of inglorious suffering.