e two youths hesitated as red waves of rebellion
surged up in them. But in that same split second they realized that any
show of resistance would be the same as putting a gun to their heads and
pulling the trigger. They were as helpless as a couple of caged
sparrows, and to do anything about it would be plain, downright
stupidity. And so they slowly turned around and suffered themselves to
be trussed up hand and foot by the two Jap sailors.

And suffer they did, in every sense of the word. It was a joy to those
two sons of heathens to have the opportunity to tie up two white men,
and they went about their tasks with savage glee. And the Jap officer,
standing to one side with his gun ready, took almost as much joy in the
operations as they did. For Dawson and Freddy Farmer it was terrible
torture to both mind and soul. The loops of the thin, tough line were
yanked so tight that they felt like cords of white fire burning into
their flesh. Then long before the two Jap seamen had completed the job
the feeling of burning bands of white fire disappeared. There was just a
dull, throbbing numbness in their legs and in their arms. And as the
final fiendish touch the end of the line was looped about their necks,
and drawn back tight and tied so that every time they moved their heads
the loop bit into their throats and choked off their wind.

Finally, through the pounding in his ears, Dawson heard the Jap officer
scream something in his native tongue. Then he felt himself being lifted
up and slung across one of the Japs' shoulders like a sack of wet meal.
And he could not keep track of just exactly what happened after that.
All the bombs in the world were exploding in his brain. His lungs were
on fire, and his thumping heart was pounding its way out through his
ribs. He seemed to lose control of the movement of his eyeballs. They
kept rolling back up into his brain, and vision was impossible.
Everything was just a surging ocean of red waves. In a crazy abstract
sort of way he wondered if he had lost consciousness. He decided he
hadn't, otherwise he wouldn't be thinking such a jumble of thoughts.

Then, suddenly, instinct told him that he was falling. He tried to cry
out in alarm, but there was no sound of his own voice in his ringing
ears. There was just the wild, angry jabbering of Japanese. A tiny
thought whipped through his brain to tell him that his Jap seaman had
missed his footing and was lunging downward. And the instinct