yards
from the floating life raft. Unable to move a muscle, he stared as the
conning-tower hatch opened and a couple of men spilled out onto the wet
deck and hurried toward the bow. The undersea killer veered over toward
the floating raft.

What he saw made Dave fighting mad. He shook with anger, and a red film
seemed to slide over his eyes.

"So?" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "So it's like that, huh?"

It was just like that. No sooner had the words left Dawson's lips than
the U-boat's bow gun belched flame, and the sky a hundred yards or so
off the Vultee's right wing tip seemed to explode in a roar of sound and
a great puff of oily black smoke. An instant later, another bit of sky
seemed to explode. This time the puff of oily black smoke was high above
the Vultee. This was because Dawson had turned the nose of the plane
downward and was thundering straight at the U-boat at almost rocket
speed.

"So you want to play, do you?" He shouted the crazy words. "Well, so do
we! And how! Here, catch, you tramps!"

The Vultee's wing guns punctuated his words with a chattering blast of
sound that made the aircraft tremble violently. Straight lines of silver
tracers cut down at the two men crouched behind the guard of the
U-boat's bow gun. They would have done better had they dived overboard
and down under the U-boat's keel. The bullets from the Vultee's wing
guns found them and smashed them to the steel deck. Tapping rudder a
bit, Dawson veered the plane's nose a shade to the right and blazed away
at the open conning tower hatch. A man crawling up out of it was flung
head over heels clear of the U-boat's side and down into the water as
though by some invisible giant.

By then the Vultee's prop was about ready to chew into the conning tower
itself, and Dawson had to haul the nose up and go curving around and
away. That maneuver permitted Freddy Farmer to go into action with his
rear guns. As Dave jerked his head around for a split second, he saw the
four men on the raft trying to scramble up to the U-boat's wet deck,
only to go toppling over backwards like tenpins and disappear beneath
the surface of the water.

"There, you rotten beggars, you'll not do that again!" the English
youth's voice rang loud in Dawson's inter-com phones. "Not by half, you
won't!"

"The sub's crash diving, Freddy!" Dawson yelled as he saw the hatch
close and the nose of the U-boat slip down under water. "Oh, gosh! If we
only had a depth