March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. NavyMcClintock, Marshall
History
March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy
McClintock, Marshall
World War, 1939-1945 -- Juvenile fiction
“Right,” March agreed. “We’ll reach it in about an hour. We’ve gone
about two hours since the patrol plane left us.”
So it was that Scoot Bailey, lying at the edge of the beach not far
from his wrecked plane, which he had covered with boughs so it would
not be seen by Jap patrols, heard a rushing of water a little way from
shore and saw a huge black hull appear from the deep, not a hundred
feet out!
He scrambled behind a bush quickly and peered out cautiously, though it
was so dark that no one on the sub could possibly have seen him.
“A sub!” he exclaimed. “But the question is—Jap or American?”
He tried to find a marking that would tell him the answer to his
question, but it was too dark to see anything. Then he made out figures
of men on the bridge, two men looking around. One said something to the
other, but so low that he could not make out the language. One of the
men took up a lookout position.
“If it’s a Jap,” Scoot muttered to himself, “I’d hate to let it get
away from me. I’m probably not in any danger. It must just be up to
charge batteries. They wouldn’t come ashore here for anything—nothing
to come for, unless some of the men just want to plant their feet on
solid ground for a change. Even then I can hide.”
He thought hard. “Seems as if there ought to be something I could do,
though one grounded flier against a sub is kind of tough odds.”
He was so busy trying to think what he could do to sink a Jap submarine
single-handed that he convinced himself that it _was_ Japanese.
“The machine guns in my plane!” he exclaimed suddenly. “They probably
still work if I can get at them. The plane’s heading the wrong way or I
could just shoot them as is. But maybe I can get one or two out.”
Then he wondered if fifty-caliber machine-gun bullets could possibly
sink a submarine.
“Probably not,” he told himself. “But they could pick off quite a few
officers and men. And then if the rest decided to come and get me, I’d
get quite a few more on their way in.”
Suddenly the Diesels on the submarine roared into life, and quickly
settled down to a steady purr.
“Charging batteries is right,” Scoot told himself. “That’s just enough
sound to keep them from hearing me try to get a gun out of my plane. Of
course, they’ve probably got their own machine gun unlimbered up there.
Usually do when they’re surfaced like this. But—well, I’ll see what I
can do.”
Scoot crawled over to his plane and started to work. Taking off the
engine cowling seemed to him to make a terrific noise and he stopped to
listen, wondering if he had been heard. The sound from the Diesels
seemed very low. And then he heard something—something that made his
heart leap.
“Car—reee me back to old Virginnneee!” sang a high tenor voice. The
lookout was indulging in his favorite sport. Scoot leaped out on the
shore.
“Yippeeee!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account