ground
like nobody's business. But, Freddy!"

"Yes, Dave, yes?" the English youth asked impatiently. "What now?"

"Just a thought," Dawson said in a quiet, steady voice that surprised
himself. "We'll get that baby off, and we'll raise merry heck with these
birds, even if it's the last thing we do. That's the idea! Maybe it
_will_ be the last. I have a funny feeling that we've had more than our
share of luck already. So--Well, if you'd rather we tried to swipe a
single-seater Messerschmitt apiece, so that--"

"Rot!" young Farmer snapped angrily. "So that one of us might get away?
Meaning me? Not a bit of it, Dave! We started the balmy business
together, and by the Lord Harry we'll _finish_ it together, one way or
the other. So stop your silly talk, and let's get on with things. You
have your gun, of course?"

"Right in my hand, kid," Dawson assured him. "And you're a pretty nice
guy, Freddy, if I haven't ever mentioned it before. Okay, together it
is. Keep low, and run like the dickens. If somebody gets in our
way--well, it will be just too bad for him. They're going half nuts out
there, now, so maybe we'll get the breaks and not be seen. Set, Freddy?"

"Set, old thing," the English youth replied, and pressed Dawson's arm.
"Luck to us both!"

"We don't count," Dawson said, and pressed young Farmer's arm in return.
"Luck to the Casablanca war conference, please God! Right! Here we go!"

Dawson pressed Freddy Farmer's arm once more, then wheeled around, bent
way over almost double, circled the scrub bush, and went streaking out
onto the desert strip at top speed toward the Messerschmitt 110 parked a
good eighty yards away. Farmer bolted right after him.

Perhaps it was Dawson's spinning imagination, or perhaps it was an
actual fact, but it seemed that no sooner was he out from behind the
scrub bush than the amount of light thrown forward by the swiftly
approaching day was tripled in intensity. He had the sensation that he
and Farmer stood out as clear and as huge as a couple of runaway horses,
and that every German eye was fixed upon them. In fact, had a hundred
machine guns suddenly opened up on them, he would not have been the
least bit surprised. With every racing stride he took, with every split
second that skipped by, he expected just that.

However, there were no screams of alarm, and there were no blasts of
yammering machine-gun fire as the two youths covered forty yards in
their headlong dash and reached