“Everybody under the mats!” he ordered. “There’s no telling when the next Jap plane will show up. Once we’re out of sight we can relax and eat a bit of lunch, if the ladies care to break into their supplies now.” Cocoanuts, bananas, smoked chicken and taro bread had been stored in the catamaran’s hollow hulls—enough to last the entire company for a week. Since it was the first meal the bomber’s crew had tasted for a whole day, they were given extra rations. Crayle wolfed down his share and reached for more. A sharp word from Barry stopped him, but the young skipper caught a look of animal cunning that replaced the greed in the other’s eyes. From now on, Barry decided, the shock-crazed lieutenant would need to be watched like a wild beast. There was no predicting what mad impulse might seize his twisted brain. They were finishing their meal when another Jap plane roared overhead. This was a twin-engined _Mitsubishi_ bomber, a land-based type, that appeared to have taken off from the island to leeward. It swooped low to investigate the drifting catamaran. For a tense thirty seconds Barry’s party waited, and wondered if more bullets would come slashing through their thin fiber mats. Then the engines’ snarl faded to a distant droning. Their camouflage had worked! Not so pleasant was the thought that they would have to land on a beach patrolled by the enemy. If this island were the site of a Jap air base it would be well guarded. Even the darkness might not be camouflage enough to fool the Nip patrols. As the afternoon waned, the island’s shore line grew more and more distinct. A second bomber rose from behind the wall of dark green jungle, and three more returned from some patrol or bombing mission. There could be no doubt of the existence of an air base somewhere inland from the beach. The one encouraging fact was that none of the planes paid any particular attention to the drifting catamaran. Undoubtedly they had all looked it over. If the wreck looked so harmless to the Jap pilots, shore patrols were not likely to bother their heads about it. The real danger would come after Barry’s crew went ashore to cut a new mast. The sun was low in the west when two squadrons of heavy bombers approached at 20,000 feet. Even before the Jap ack-ack on the island cut loose, Barry’s party recognized them—_American Flying Fortresses and Liberators_! Peering up through the cracks in the camouflage, everyone aboard the catamaran raised a wild cheer. For a moment, Barry had all he could do to keep his crew from tossing the fiber mats aside and standing up to wave. His orders were drowned out by the thunder of exploding bombs. [Illustration: _Peering Through the Camouflage They All Cheered_] The noise, even at a distance of three miles, was ear-shattering. The very ocean shuddered. More than eighty tons of block-busters, Barry later calculated, must have been dropped within the space of a few minutes on the Jap air base.