Finally, through the pounding in his ears, Dawson heard the Jap officer scream something in his native tongue. Then he felt himself being lifted up and slung across one of the Japs' 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 eyeballs. 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 Japanese. A tiny thought whipped through his brain to tell him that his Jap 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_ From a long way off came the faint rumble of sound. It grew louder and louder, and took on the steady, rhythmic beat of powerful engines giving of their best. Every so often a different sound broke through the rhythmic beat, but it faded out almost instantly, and the steady beat continued on forever--and ever--endlessly. Seconds, minutes, and years dragged by, and then Dave Dawson was conscious of the fact that the rhythmic beat came from all about him, and that his body was absorbing the vibration of it. Not yet did it occur to him to try to move, or even to open his eyes. As a matter of fact, either of those physical accomplishments was far beyond his powers. And he continued to remain in a befuddled world of rhythmic beats, vibration, and darkness. And then, suddenly, there was light all around him. But a few extra seconds ticked by before his half frozen brain could grasp the fact that his eyes had more or less automatically opened and that he was staring up at a light grey-painted ceiling and walls, and that up off to his left there was a round window through which light was pouring. He saw the ceiling, the grey-painted walls, and the round window, and although they registered upon his brain individually, they meant nothing to him as a whole.