They were going down to have a look below. He couldn't use his flap mike. If he cut and ran he would have to prove he hadn't drained his tank to get out of a hot odds-on battle; he'd have to have proof that the tank wasn't filled when he took off. But he had to decide at once.

A guarded voice spoke. It was Allison's. "Peel off and dive by position.

Come up after a check below clouds."

The Flight Lieutenant's Spitfire lanced over on its side and streaked down like a rocket. O'Malley followed. Stan's lips pulled into a hard line. He flipped the Spitfire over on its side and went roaring down the chute. The air speed and altimeter were going insane. The shriek of the dive shook every nerve in Stan's body, and set him back against the crash pad, holding him there with a powerful grip. The three Spitfires roared out of the clouds at the same instant. They streaked into the clear blue for a moment, then shot upward and ducked back into the cloud again.

They had seen nothing except a low and rocky coastline with white lines of breakers beating against it. Not a plane in the world, except the squadron, so it seemed.

And then the clouds broke away and a harbor was in the frame of their windscreens. It looked like a toy harbor with its oblong breakwater. A great hangar with a black painted roof looked out upon the gently rolling waters. There were seaplanes in the picture somewhere. Stan craned his neck and saw what was holding the eyes of the men in the Blenheims and the Bristols. Three toy boats rode at anchor beside a dock. Those were supply ships that had slipped through the blockade.

Headquarters was taking a last desperate chance of keeping that valuable cargo from getting through.

Then the Rose Raid actually started. The radio began to crackle. "Rose Raid at targets! Rose Raid over targets!" That was the squadron leader telling headquarters they were going down.

The nine light Spitfires went down in a screaming dive to cover the Blenheims and the Bristols. The big Bristols swung into line-astern formation and bashed through the first upheaval of Flak-88 sh.e.l.ls. Black and white blooms of bursting sh.e.l.ls bracketed them as their leader slid into the curtain of fire. The next instant the big Bristol disappeared in a ma.s.s of smoke and flame.

A Blenheim on Stan's right twisted upward, threw away a wing and went down in a dizzy spin, ramming its nose into the roof of the black hangar.

The remaining four bombers plunged down upon their objective with the Spitfires doing dizzy stunts alongside them and the air seemingly filled with Heinkel single-seaters which had slashed into the picture from nowhere. A darting Heinkel dived upon Stan. Stan opened up and saw an aileron flutter away from the plummeting fighter. The formation of Spitfires had broken up now. It was everybody into the dogfight to keep the Heinkels from getting at the four precious bombers.

The slashing, whirling Spitfires did the job. They tore into the Heinkels and their deadly eight-gun combinations showed at once what superior fire power they had. Stan watched O'Malley send a fighter down and slide over on his back, out of the path of three more, to get another before his first burst of fire had ceased smoking. O'Malley was a demon of the sky. He was in and out and up and down and his trail was a trail of death. Allison was up there, too, doing just about as well but doing it with cold precision rather than by sheer recklessness.

Stan knifed into a wedge of Heinkels darting down to drop upon one of the Bristols. The Heinkels scattered before his fire, twisting and ducking and darting. Stan laid over and looked down. The bombers had unloaded. Below him the three ships, big now, and dirty in their streaked gray and black paint, were very close. Men were running wildly about on their decks or leaping into the water. One of them burst into flame amidship, another seemed to explode, the third listed far over and her stern sank slowly down.

Stan's radio was shouting at him. "Rose Raid! Rose Raid! Ten bandits down. Two bombers have left formation. Two fighters have left formation.

Rose Raid, come in. Rose Raid, come in!"

The Spitfires could not come in. While the bombers slipped away under full throttle, free of their loads and faster than they had been, the Spitfires slashed and blasted and ducked. Stan watched a Spitfire go into the bay, twisting and spinning. He wondered if it could be Allison or O'Malley.

"Red Flight, come in." That was Allison's voice.

"Comin' soon as I get me another spalpeen," O'Malley's brogue burred.

Stan glanced at his gas gauge. It showed empty, but the Merlin was still hammering away. He nosed her up as he cuddled his flap mike.

"Wilson coming in."

Up and up the Spitfire roared, shaking the Heinkels off her tail as she twisted and banked, her 1,000 horses tossing her toward the ceiling.

Stan held his breath as he headed her home. Was that gas gauge a liar?

He heard the Merlin cough and knew the gauge had not lied. Looking back he saw the dim outline of the enemy sh.o.r.e. Back there he could cripple down and they would not shoot him. They would be glad to get a sound Spitfire and they would keep him locked up for the rest of the war.

Ahead lay the gray waters of the English channel, rough and sullen, cold as ice.

"Wilson out of gas. Making a try for home," he shouted into his flap mike.

Above him he saw that Messerschmitt One-Tens had joined the Heinkels in trying to finish off the Spitfires. He leveled off as the Merlin gave its last gasp of power and sent the ship gliding toward home.

For a time Stan thought the Jerries had missed him, they were so busy up above. Eight thousand feet below his wings the rough waters of the channel were moving up to meet him. The first warning Stan had that he was not to escape without a fight was a terrific jolting and ripping that almost shook him loose from his seat; the next was the staccato rattle of a rapid-fire cannon that was ripping great chunks out of his right wing.

The Spitfire writhed up on her side, then rolled over on her back and shot seaward. Stan pulled the stick back against his stomach and kicked the right rudder viciously. He looked up just as the Jerry loosed another broadside which missed the ship. The Jerry zoomed back up, satisfied he had finished the Spitfire that was trying to slip away.

Stan gave the Jerry but a glance. He was battling to pull the Spitfire out of the spin he had jammed her into. He soon realized that there was no control left in the ship, so he unbuckled his belt and rammed back what was left of the hatch cover. He squirmed out of the c.o.c.kpit and dived. As he slid away from the ship he felt himself caught and held.

His chute bellied out and the shoulder straps wrenched at him. A second later he was ripped loose and whirled away from the crumpled wreck. As he leveled off he saw that he was about 3,000 feet from the water.

It appeared also that Stan had the channel to himself. Overhead he could hear the faint drone of motors; otherwise there was no sound except the cries of a half-dozen excited gulls that swooped down about him curiously as the chute let him drift downward toward the gray sea.

An insh.o.r.e wind whipped at his clothing, twisting him dizzily as he dangled there in mid-air, and he had a brief, crazy hope that it might carry him in to land before he went down. But that wild hope died at once when he realized the sh.o.r.e was miles away.

There was nothing for it but to take his wetting and hope the R.A.F.

life jacket was as good as it was supposed to be. He stared downward at the choppy surface that seemed to sweep upward to meet him, gritting his teeth to drive fear away. This was a chance every channel flier took ...

and sometimes they were rescued.

He handled the chute controls skillfully, easing himself down with the wind while he fought to loosen the buckles that held the straps tightly about him. If he went into the water with that chute dragging him down there wouldn't be any chance of eventual rescue.

As his numbed fingers tore at the buckles he wondered what it felt like to drown. The sea was close now. A bleak gray expanse of waves that reached hungry arms upward to receive another human sacrifice. One buckle came free, then another. He ripped himself out of the harness and plummeted down the last ten feet, his body driving deep into the icy cold water.

He came to the surface sputtering and beating the water madly, then remembered the life jacket he wore, and let its buoyancy support him while he took stock of the situation.

It looked hopeless. He was a single tiny speck floating on a vast expanse of sea where every surface craft was subject to attack and more intent on making port than searching for downed fliers. The sky overhead was clear of planes now. He wondered if anyone had seen him bailing out.

He had reported he was short of gas. If either Allison or O'Malley made it back safely, he had a hunch they wouldn't rest until they returned to search the sea for him or the wreckage of his plane.

That was his only hope. Any other rescue would be purely accidental. The icy fingers of the water were eating into his flesh. The heavy flying togs were becoming water-soaked, dragging him down. He didn't know how long he could hold out. He tried to swim toward the dimly distant sh.o.r.e line, but the waves battered him back and the numbing cold stole away his strength.

He forced himself to relax, let the life jacket support him. It might be hours before rescue came. It looked hopeless, but a man never gave up hope while life remained in his body. If he could keep his head above water, keep from swallowing too much of the salt sea, he could last a few hours at least.

And he clung to the belief that Allison or O'Malley would return to look for him. Though he didn't know just what either of them could do if they did spot him from the sky. If one of them could get hold of a seaplane he didn't doubt that they'd try to set it down on the rough surface to rescue him. He tried to recall whether he'd seen any seaplanes since arriving in England.

Things were getting hazy in his mind. He gave up trying to move his limbs. The blood was congealing in his veins. He had a strange feeling that his flesh was becoming brittle with cold, that he would break into pieces if he tried to move an arm or leg.

A delightful sensation of helpless lethargy crept over him. This was the sort of thing he had read happened to people when death was very close and inevitable. It was Nature's kind way of drugging the perceptions against the impact of death.

He began to hear a buzzing in his ears, and he decided that was the beginning of the end. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered. Not even the war.

The buzzing grew louder and became a distinct annoyance. He tried to shut it away from his consciousness, but it persisted. He felt himself being dragged back from the coma into which he had sunk. The buzzing became a loud drone, then smashed at his ear drums with a shattering roar.

He came to life again, and fought to blink his salt-encrusted eyelids open. He recognized that roar of a Spitfire motor. It was zooming over him, flattening out in a crazy reckless pancake dangerously close to the surface of the water.

He got one eye open and caught a flashing glimpse of a grinning Irish face leaning over the side of the plane and shouting something to him.

The plane lifted swiftly and swept away and Stan found himself waving a numbed hand after it.

The ice in his veins was transformed into tongues of flame that licked through his body. O'Malley had come, just as he had known the Irishman would. He would bring a rescue ship back. All Stan had to do was stay alive a little longer.

He grinned happily as he watched the Spitfire become a dim speck in the sky and then disappear. He began beating the water with his arms and legs, and he jeered good-naturedly at the sea that had sought to engulf him.

The plane was coming back, circling high overhead to spot the floating pilot for a fishing boat that was putting out from sh.o.r.e. As the small craft drew near Stan saw two men in oilskins waving to him. He waved back, and then a strange thing happened. It was as though someone had struck him on the head with a sledge hammer. He was unconscious when the boat reached him, and he stayed unconscious for a full twenty-four hours.

He woke up in a strange new world that was utterly different from anything he had known before. A clean, white, antiseptic world with narrow beds and pretty girls in white uniforms. He was tucked in one of those beds, and one of the pretty girls in a white uniform was bending over him solicitously.

"Where am I?" he demanded.