destroyer, and the craft seemed virtually to spin around to port the
length of her keel, and then fairly streak across the water.

"The submarine detector has picked up something, I guess!" Dave
muttered, and took a firmer grip on the chain rail. "Now, wouldn't it be
sweet to get torpedoed even before we get any place?"

"You say the happiest things!" Freddy got out in a slightly strained
voice. "Shut up, and use your eyes. Maybe we'll sight something."

"In this darkness?" Dave echoed, and promptly leaned over the chain rail
and strained his eyes at the black water beyond the bow. "Don't be
silly. Not unless it's trimmed with neon lights."

For perhaps five minutes the destroyer pounded through the night sea at
emergency knots. Then the all clear horn sounded again. The destroyer's
speed slackened off slightly, and her bow came cutting around to the
previous course. A faint sigh of relief seemed to whisper along the
spray-drenched decks. And then presently everything was as normal as
before.

"Probably one of ours," Dave grunted. "Or just a false alarm. But either
suits me okay. There's something about getting torpedoed and drowned
that I just don't like."

"Quite, oh quite!" Freddy Farmer echoed. "If a chap has to cop one, much
better to cop it in the air. Definitely cleaner, you know."

Dave nodded, but didn't make any comment. And once more the two air aces
lapsed into silence and stood at the chain rail peering out over the
night-shrouded waters, each with the same thought unspoken in his mind.
Way out there ahead were two Yank aircraft carriers waiting to take them
aboard. And when that was accomplished, then where to next? A
tantalizing question that only time would answer for them. And the
smirking gods of war, too, of course, if the two youths could but hear
their death rattle voices!

CHAPTER FIVE

_Instructions For Eagles_

The sun was hardly a faint band of yellow white light on the eastern
horizon when the speeding destroyer came within sight of the waiting
task force. Despite the bucking and pitching of the craft during the
dark hours of night, a good many of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps
pilots aboard had managed to curl up somehow on the deck and go to
sleep. It was not the case with Dave and Freddy, however. They remained
awake the whole time talking of this and that, or just staring
thoughtfully out across the vast stretches of night-shrouded water.

And so they were among the