If Dawson and Farmer had been under a complete hypnotic spell they couldn't have obeyed more mechanically as they backed up until the chair edge hit them behind the knees, and then sat down. And like a couple of dazed puppets waiting to be moved around, they just sat there with eyes fixed on the Jap Admiral. He seated himself, and stared at them for a long time before he spoke. "So you have very interesting news for me?" he suddenly said with a rising inflection of voice. "Well, I am interested. So tell me all about it, please?" Dawson gulped slightly and tried desperately to bat his brains off the merry-go-round on which they were riding, and get them to function properly. If he ever was to play a game of wits, this was the time. But at that precise moment he couldn't have spoken his own name correctly for the life of him. Freddy Farmer, however, rushed to his rescue. The English youth looked the Jap Admiral straight in the eye, and shook his head. "Too late, now," he said quietly. "Neither of us knows where our force is now. It may still be up north off your Japanese coast, or perhaps it is now steaming back to Pearl Harbor." "That is too bad," the Jap said without a single change of expression. "I was hoping that perhaps I could detach one or two of my destroyers to go meet them and sink them." Both boys got the full meaning of the "one or two destroyers" crack, but both refused to rise to the bait. They simply shrugged and waited for the Jap Navy big shot to take the lead again. They thought they saw a faint flicker of anger cross his flat, shiny face, indicating that he was a little annoyed. But that's all the sign he gave. He stared at them each in turn for several more minutes, then seemed to fix his gaze on Dawson's face. "You say there are _five_ carriers?" he asked. "Yes, five carriers and--" Dawson replied, and then stopped dead as the walls of the room seem to come tumbling down around his ears. He heard Freddy Farmer's startled gasp, and wished in that moment that he possessed a gun so that he could shoot his brains out. Of all the stupid, dumb fools, he took the prize. With his bare face hanging out he had walked straight into the Jap Admiral's trap, and had been caught cold. In short, the Jap had suddenly addressed him in _German_, and without thinking, fathead that he was, he had started to reply in the _same_ tongue. "And you Americans boast of being so very, very clever!" the Jap Navy big shot was now sneering at him. "Fools! Little children! You are all soft, and eaten away in the brain. You are finished. Do you not realize that?"