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town,” he said. “It must have been better before the Revolution, but it’s a good spot still. They put us out beyond Pechersk, with the aerodrome about a mile from the river. Not much to do away from the aerodrome. You can go into the town—they lend us a car whenever we want it—and eat a heavy meal with the Germans. Or you can go toying with Amaryllis—there’s any amount of that to be had for the asking. Or you can go to the cinema and see Douglas Fairbanks and Norma Talmadge and Mack Sennett pretty well as soon as you can see ’em in London, with Russian sub-titles. And eat crystallised fruits. I tell you, there’s a glut of crystallised fruits in that town. You can’t get a proper cigarette for love or money, but you can get those damn things pretty well chucked at you. It’s a local industry, or something.”
    He went on to talk for a long time about the type of machine that they had out there, and the ability of the Russian pilots. He was of the opinion that the best pilots were the Cossacks, and he said that the Russians were concentrating on trying to turn the best of their cavalry into fighting pilots. He thought that that was sound, and he had a very high opinion of their ability. Thetrouble was that they were so illiterate. Everyone coming to that course was supposed to be able to read and write; in actual fact their best pilots could do neither with any accuracy. Many of them had their horses with them; there were horse-lines along one side of the aerodrome.
    “They fly into a fight … like riding a horse. No theory about it; but they’re good. They’ve got a feel for the machine from the very first. It’s a natural genius for the game. And they’ve got any amount of guts.”
    There was a very long silence then. He sat there in that chair before the fire, staring at the coals, his hands outstretched upon the bolstered arms, his long black hair falling down over his forehead in the half-light. I thought that he was shivering a little as I watched him.
    “That went on till about six weeks ago,” he said at last. “I had a pretty good time of it out there, taking it all round. My pay comes regularly, and I send a good bit of it back to England. I arranged that before I signed the contract, and they stuck to their side of it. The money gets through all right. And I like the work. I’d have been there still, but for this job.”
    I leaned forward and knocked my pipe out slowly against the palm of my hand over the grate. I knew that we were coming to the root of it now.
    “This is for them?” I asked.
    He didn’t answer that at once. “They’ve grown to trust me pretty well out there,” he said. “More than the others. They came along one day about the middle of last month, and made me an offer. They wanted a long night flight, or rather a series of night flights, done outside Russia. They offered me a thousand pounds sterling, with all expenses, as a fee for doing it.”
    He paused, irresolute.
    “Where’d you got to fly to?” I asked.
    “Portsmouth,” he said laconically.
    I had guessed something of the sort, I suppose. At all events, it didn’t come as much of a surprise.
    He went on without looking at me. “I’m getting to the end of my time out there. I’ve saved a bit, of course—about a coupleof hundred pounds. But that’s not capital. It wouldn’t go any way if I was out of a job. I tell you, half a dozen times in the last three years I’d have been on my feet if I could have raked up a thousand or so. Dawson wanted me to go in with him in that show of his in Penang, you know.” I didn’t know, but I was silent. “And I couldn’t, and he sold out to the Dutch as a going concern at three hundred per cent. And then Sam Robertson gave me a chance of going in with him on the Argentine Survey, and he’s doing damn well, I hear. And I’d have liked to have been with Sam again….”
    I cut him short. “Why did they choose an Englishman?”
    He laughed. “Bar the