Too bad the Devastator didn't carry a couple of torpedoes, so that they could slam a death blow into the second cruiser as they went down the long trail that has no end. Too bad, but no sense crying about it. The plane had carried only one torpedo, and they had made full use of that one. There were only the bombs left--bombs that might spill a lot of Jap blood over the cruiser's decks, but would never go through her deck plates to do real damage below. And so-- "So here goes!" Dave whispered softly as the gun-spitting cruiser seemed to come sweeping up toward his spinning propeller. "Here goes Freddy--and here I go. Something to remember us by!" A sob rose up in Dave's throat and stuck. He winked his eyes that had suddenly begun to sting. Then he grinned, and the grin grew into a harsh, defiant laugh. The last split second had arrived. He had to pull out and give Freddy a chance to release their wing bombs, or dive on straight into the cruiser. He was tempted to do that last thing: to slam straight in and go out in a roaring blaze of glory. But cold fighting sense refused to permit him to do it. He braced himself, hauled back on the stick, brought the nose up and shot straight forward not twenty feet above the cruiser's fighting top. One second more and he would streak right over the up-tilted muzzles of the forward anti-aircraft guns. A target a blind man couldn't miss. A target you could hit with rocks. One second more. Two at the most. Dump the bombs, Freddy! Slam them down and blast some of those dirty brown devils to the place where they and all their filthy back-stabbing breed belong. Give it to them, Freddy. Give them all we've got left! Dave didn't know whether he was roaring out the words, or whether they were simply echoing around in his brain. He simply knew that the Devastator was perched on the very brink of all eternity, and that he was banging out the last of his bullets as a sort of final touch. He only knew that-- But he didn't. He didn't know anything any more. He was completely lost in a huge black cloud that pressed in on him from all sides. He was right in the middle of it, and sailing away and away. The light of day was gone, and night was all about him. Was it night, or was this what death was like? Darkness. Thick darkness with a faint roaring in the distance, and drifting to him from all sides. "I can't be dead--my head hurts too darned much!"