The pursuit was only a few hundred yards behind. It stayed there for a while, apparently awaiting some kind of signal from the seaplane. Then it came around to one side, and Scoot tried to hide his face. “First and only time I ever wished I looked like a Jap,” Scoot said. The fast plane flew alongside the other for a time, slowing down to keep pace with it, but still some distance to one side. “What is this?” Scoot asked. “Are we just going out for a spin together? I wish he’d do something.” The Jap flier obliged by cutting back and coming up on the other side, then speeding up and circling around in front. It was at this moment that he looked full into Scoot’s face. Scoot could even see the alarm that filled him, the wide eyes, the gasp of amazement, as he realized that an American was flying the Jap seaplane. At that moment, Scoot pressed the trigger on his own machine gun, but it was too late. The Jap had darted out of range just in time. He was so fast that Scoot could not possibly maneuver his slow ship to battle him. “There’s only one chance,” Scoot said to himself, “and I’m going to try it. If this monkey is the bad shot most of them are, he may miss on his first try, even with a set-up like me. If he does, that’s my chance.” The fast pursuit was diving on the seaplane’s tail. Scoot heard the staccato rattling of the ship’s machine guns. “Good!” he cried. “Firing while he’s still too far away, like all of them! Too anxious!” But then Scoot’s plane wobbled, tipped over, and went spiraling down to the sea in a slow spin. The pursuit plane circled above and watched. About fifty feet above the water, the seaplane lurched a little, seemed to come out of its spin. The pursuit plane pilot looked puzzled, but he smiled again as he saw the plane stall, slip back and hit the sea, tail first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ATTACK! It was the cold water that brought Scoot to his senses, cold water creeping up over his chest. When he felt it, he scrambled forward, but fell back in his seat at once. The arm he had reached out to pull himself up with would not work. It hung limp at his side. He glanced down and saw blood streaming from it. “Got to do something about that!” he muttered dazedly. “Anyway, it worked. He thought he hit me. I did a nice slow spinning dive. He thought he’d got the pilot and the plane just went out of control, fell into a natural slow spin. And did I keep it slow! He must have thought it was funny when I pulled out of it just over the water, but I didn’t make it look too good. Couldn’t. But I’d slowed her down plenty, then put her into a stall and let her flop back tail first.”