Jack had not seen. What he did see was a tower of black smoke and pieces of debris falling over the sea. And he saw the second ship, attacked by the last torpedo plane, meet the same fate. All this had happened in the space of seconds, and all the time their disabled plane was chugging its way toward three small islands that stood out like green stones set in a field of blue. “I hope they raise chickens on those islands,” said Stew. “Chickens and no Japs,” Jack agreed. At that moment his eyes swept the sky for the Zeros. “Gone,” he murmured at last. “I guess they’ve seen enough for one day.” After that Jack was silent for a time. He was thinking: Those ships were loaded with ammunition intended for Japs on some island. If they had gone through safely, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of our Marines and Army men might have died. We got them. A feeling of pride in a job well done, a task in which he and Stew had played a large part, coursed through his being. “We found them. The torpedo planes destroyed them,” he said aloud. At that moment he would not have traded his job as a scout for any other in the service. But what of the attack on the Jap carrier and her escort? Only sound could tell them the story, for the rain squall still hid that battle from their sight. “Our radio is gone,” he said to Stew. “We’re headed for an unknown island. No one will know where we are.” “That’s right,” Stew agreed soberly. “Even those three torpedo planes have gone to join the attack on the carrier. We’re in the sky alone.” A strange wave of loneliness swept over him. “It may be months before we know how that battle ended.” Jack nodded in the direction from which came a continuous roar of motors, machine-gun fire, bursting shells, and exploding bombs. “We’re on our own, and I don’t mean maybe!” CHAPTER VI PLANE WRECKED The plane rattled, sputtered, and roared. Stew threw back the hood, climbed out to the wings to see what, if anything, might be done to keep her aloft. Then he threw back his seat to drop flat on his stomach and poke around in the fuselage. His hand touched Jack’s violin. He shoved this forward within easy reach. “Jack can play for the birds, the lizards, and the land crabs on our island,” he said to himself with a grim laugh. There was not much he could do. The main trouble was with the motor. It had taken a slug or two, and was beginning to smoke. Alternately they gained and lost altitude. Each time they lost more than they had gained. “There’s a Zero!” Stew exclaimed, righting his seat and gripping his gun. The Zero kept poking its nose in and out of the rain squall that was moving slowly toward them. “Scouting for their lost cargo ships,” said Jack.