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"You see to it that she gets up, pal," Bus said. "I'll get her down!"

When Bus and I looked around, Tony was gone. We didn't see him for several hours, and then at 1400 an ambulance clanged furiously across the field.

"Where's the Bouncing Belch?" the driver cried in some agitation.

"My God!" I shouted. "What's up! What's happened?"

"Nothin'," the ambulance driver replied. "I just want to get rid of this damned washing machine and get back to the hospital." He jumped out of the ambulance and threw the doors open. There was Tony Fry, riding in comfort, with the prettiest white washing machine you ever saw!

"Don't ask me where I got it!" he yelled. "Give the driver two cases of whiskey!" We broke out the whiskey and turned it over to the sweating driver. He shook Tony's hand warmly and drove off as we loaded the washing machine, priceless above opals, in the Belch.

"I better warn you fellows," Bus said, "that we may have some trouble getting back to Segi. OK by you?"

We nodded. Any thought that Bouncing Belch might conceivably give trouble was so difficult to accept that we would have flown her to Yokohama. Especially if Bus were pilot.

We knew that take-off time was critical. Would the wheels hold up? We held our breath as the old girl wheezed into position. The propeller whirred coral into the bushes. Slowly Bus released the brake. With terrifying momentum, for we must get up fast, we roared down the strip. We were airborne. "Oh boy!" I sighed.

"Are the wheels up?" Bus asked.

There was a long silence and then Tony's languid voice: "All but the starboard!" he said. "And the port is dragging, too!"

"Well, anyway, we're up!" Bus said. "Even if the wheels aren't."

"Now all we got to do is get down!" Tony replied.

We were over Iron Bottom Bay, off Guadal, where many Jap ships lay rotting, and where American ships, too, had found their grave. Along the shore several Jap cargo vessels, gutted and half-sunk, stuck their blunt snouts into the sandy beach. We were on our way. Home for Christmas!

Somewhere north of the Russells Bus said to us, "It's a tough decision, fellows. If we try to snap those damned wheels into position, we'll probably spring the bomb-bay doors and lose our whiskey. If we belly land, we'll break every damned bottle anyway."

There was a grim silence. I had no suggestions, but slowly, from the bottom of the plane, Tony's voice came over the interphone. "I thought of that," he said. "All the whiskey's out of the bomb bays. Moved inside. I'm sitting on it!"

"You wonderful man!" Bus shouted. "Shall we snap 'em down?"

He rose to 9,000 feet and went into a steep dive. I pressed my feet and hands against the bulkhead, but even so felt the blood rushing into my head. Suddenly, we snapped up violently. My head jerked back and the blood started down to my feet.

"Any luck?" Bus asked.

"Didn't do the wheels any good," Tony reported. "Damn near killed me. Whiskey cases everywhere."

"Get 'em squared away!" Bus ordered. "We'll belly land her!"

"Good old Bouncing Belch!" Tony said.

At the moment we were over the islands south of Segi. Although I was considerably frightened at the prospect of a belly landing, I remember studying the unequaled loveliness of that view. Below us lay hundreds of coral islands, some large, some pinpoints with no more than a tree or two. From the air they formed a fairyland.

For the coral which pushed them above the water also grew sideways under the water, so that the area was one vast sheet of rock. From above it looked like a mammoth gray-green quilt, with tufts of islands sticking through. Here and there along the quilt deep patterns of darkest blue ran helter-skelter. They were the places where coral broke off, and the ocean dropped to five or six thousand feet! It was over this vast sea of islands south of Segi that we sweated and crossed our fingers and made preparations for landing.

We padded our heads, and braced ourselves. Tony wedged the dangerous whiskey cases against