They all held on, but nothing happened. Not another charge went off. March looked questioningly at Larry. “Don’t know,” Larry said. “Maybe he’s gone on. More likely he’s playing possum, hoping we’ll think he’s gone and will come up for a look. That’s when he’d get us.” “Better stay down for a while,” March said. “Yes, he can’t fly around up there in a circle forever,” Larry said. “We’ll go up in an hour.” “What about meeting our patrol plane?” March asked. “I’m afraid we’ll miss him,” Larry said. “Can’t take a chance on going up now. He might hang around for a while, of course, if the Jap has gone.” “He could take care of that Jap in a minute,” McFee said. “Say, maybe that’s what happened,” March suggested. “Perhaps,” said Larry. “Maybe our plane came and drove off the Jap. But we can’t be sure. I’m not going to risk a sub and sixty men just to find out.” Then the sound man turned excitedly. “I hear something, sir,” he said. “Something in Morse—sounds like a hammer tapping against metal. I’ll have it in a minute.” They waited impatiently as the sound man took down the message. Then he handed it to Larry. “_Kamongo_,” it said. “Jap went home. Come on up.” Larry grinned. “It’s okay,” he said. “The Jap wouldn’t have known we were _Kamongo_. It’s our plane. Take her up.” When the ship surfaced and Larry scrambled through the hatch on to the bridge he saw the big American flying boat resting on the water not a quarter of a mile away. It taxied over beside the submarine as March and Mac joined Larry on the bridge. “I thought you’d get that hammer-on-the-hull message,” the plane’s pilot called with a smile. “Nippo just took one look at me coming and decided he had a date west of here in a big hurry.” Larry passed on his report of not having sighted the big Jap convoy and learned that no other submarine had found it either. “Well, you’re on your own now,” the pilot said. “Go get ’em and good luck.” They waved as the plane turned and roared over the water, lifted in the air and circled to the east with a last dip of its wings. “Now where do we go from here?” March asked. “We’ll head west,” Larry said. “After that Jap plane. Let’s get going. I’m going to find that convoy!” Meanwhile, the Jap plane heading west had sighted something else. Its pilot was angry at having been driven away from an American submarine just when it was about to blow the hated pigboat to its ancestors. And there ahead of him—to make up for that loss—was a lone American fighter plane. He grinned happily. “American plane,” he said to his co-pilot. “We get him.” The co-pilot looked worried. “American fighter too fast for slow flying boat. Maybe he get us!” But the pilot was angry and not to be argued with. “No, we get American fighter!” It was obvious that the American had seen them, but the plane did not put on a sudden burst of speed, did not maneuver quickly to get into position for the attack.