It was from Scoot! Dated three weeks before, it said, “In case you come this way you’ll get this. I’m on the carrier _Bunker Hill_ heading for where all of us head when we get out here. Don’t forget to come and save me from those Japs when I holler for you!” That was all, but it was good. It was just like Scoot and it made March feel fine to read it and to picture again his old friend. He showed the note to Larry when he went back to _Kamongo_, and told him about Scoot Bailey. “Sounds like a swell guy,” Larry said. “Why couldn’t he have gone into submarines, too?” “No—he’s swell, but he’s not right for pigboats,” March said. “Too much of an individualist. He’ll take orders fine, do a swell job, but he’s best when he’s on his own. Flying a fighter plane off a carrier is just exactly right for Scoot.” “Well, you never can tell—maybe we’ll run into him,” Larry said. “Stranger things have happened in wartime.” They sailed from Pearl Harbor looking for action, but several days went by without a sign of ship or plane of any kind. “We’ve got to run into something,” Larry said one day in the wardroom. “I’d hate to show up at the base with all my torpedoes intact, without a single Jap ship accounted for. Why, we’re going through about nine hundred miles of enemy waters and we’ve got to get something on the way.” “The boys out here have been scaring them into their ratholes,” McFee said. “They don’t come out any more than they have to.” “But that’s the point,” Larry said. “They’ve got to come out sometime. They’ve got garrisons on a lot of these islands, and garrisons need to be supplied.” “Well, they’re just letting the garrisons on lots of those islands starve to death,” Stan said. “Sure, in the Marshalls and a few other places where we’ve got ’em surrounded,” the Skipper said. “But they’re still supplying and reinforcing plenty of places around these parts. They lose some ships every day. I just want them to lose a couple to us, as we’re passing by on our way to more important things.” “What about Wake Island?” March asked. “Yes, they’re still supplying Wake,” Larry said. “We’re not too far away from it any more, but we haven’t got it really cut off. But our course isn’t very close to Wake.” “Couldn’t we just edge over that way and have a look?” March asked. “Well, now, maybe we could,” Larry said. “Nobody told us just what course to follow out here. When we get a bit further we’ve got to run submerged most of the time anyway. We just laid down the straightest route to our destination. But a little detour wouldn’t do any harm. Lieutenant Anson, carry us over near Wake.” With a smile, March left the wardroom and went to the navigating desk. There he plotted the course for Wake Island, went up on the conning tower for a shot of the sun to check his course, and gave the new course to the helmsman. Then he went back to the wardroom.