"Thanks for saving me the trouble of hunting you out!" he shouted. "But you'd be a flock of dead ducks, no matter what you tried. Me and Freddy have been around, slobs, see? We sort of know most of the answers, now, when it comes to you baby killers. Okay! Try this one on your rice bowl!" As the last left Dave's lips he pulled the nose of the Douglass Dauntless straight up toward Heaven. He let the plane prop claw upward until it was just this side of the stalling point. Then, with a kick on the rudder pedal and a swift pass at the controls, he whipped the scout-bomber over and down at practically the vertical. As he had been going straight up, the Kawanishi had been rushing straight forward, and so as a result the big craft was almost directly below when Dawson came rushing down again. He had only to ease just a little out of his dive to catch the top of the flying boat in his sights. And the instant he had it pinned in his sights he let go with his forward guns. For one brief instant nothing seemed to happen. Then suddenly the huge Kawanishi appeared to stand still in the air. Stand still and spew out jetting ribbons of red flame from a dozen different points from the nose of the hull clear back to the tail. The jetting ribbons of flame marked the efforts of the Jap gunners aboard to get the diving Dauntless in their sights. However, they might just as well have tried to pick off a haywire comet rushing down at them. And then, as the flying boat seemed to come to a dead halt in the air, the efforts of the Jap gunners came to a swift and abrupt halt. A tiny tongue of flame shot up from the forward end. Then as though by magic it spread out fan-shaped and went sweeping backward to engulf everything in a raging inferno of flame. Eyes popping, and heart practically standing still, Dawson stared in awe at the horrible sight. And then in the nick of time he snapped out of his trance, and hauled the plunging Dauntless off to the side and into the clear. "About time, little man!" he heard Freddy Farmer shout. "I thought you were going to run into the beggar, and tell him you were sorry. But you know you're very hoggish, don't you. A very greedy beggar, if there ever was one." Dawson didn't make any reply at once. He brought the Dauntless back onto even keel, and then turned in the seat to look back at the Kawanishi. That is, he turned in the seat to look back at what was _left_ of the huge flying boat. And that was just a great ball of flame and smoke that hovered in midair for a moment or two before it started dropping earthward trailing behind a long column of fluffy black. Dave followed it all the way down until it smacked into the Southwest Pacific with a mighty splash. "What was that you were babbling about, pal?" he then demanded of his flying mate. "I was remarking that you are a rotter!" Freddy Farmer snapped. "Very definitely so. And twice as greedy, too. What do you think I'm back here for, with guns of my own, eh?"