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seven.”
    “That’s right—that’s what we want. Come on your bike. If either doesn’t turn up, he loses the ten bob.”
    They discussed the detail of their plan and drank another beer or two; then it was closing time, and the “Black Horse” vomited its occupants out into the dim, moonlit street. Marshall walked back to the station with his companions and went up to bed. Lying in bed before sleep, he thought that he had had a splendid day. He had got up in the middle of the morning, and it had been fine and bright and sunny. He had gone fishing with his new rod. He had caught one of the biggest fish in the river and landed it without either net or gaff. He had showed it to a girl, quite a pretty girl, and she had been nice to him about it. He was well on the way to a day’s pigeon-shooting, and he had contracted to be shown a wild fox and a wild badger both within a quarter of an hour. A splendid day.
    Quite a pretty girl. He wondered how he could find out her Christian name without calling attention to his curiosity.
    He slept.
    He was out next morning at dispersal soon after nine. Gunnar was there already, preparing to start up; the ground crew were plugging-in the battery. Marshall walked up and inspected the fabric patches on the fuselage, still red with dope. His rear-gunner joined him.
    “Come up nice and tight, haven’t they?” he said. “It’s the dry weather does it.”
    Marshall straightened up. “They want a lick of paint now. We don’t want to go around like that.” He liked things to be neat and tidy and good-looking, like that Section Officer.
    Sergeant Phillips said: “I’ll get hold of some paint and give them a lick this afternoon, after we come in.”
    His captain said: “Hear about my pike?”
    The sergeant grinned: “Aye. The young lady I took out last night, she saw you riding into camp with it. How much did it weigh?”
    “Eleven and a quarter pounds.”
    “My young lady, she was just coming off duty in the signals office. She said they didn’t half have a good laugh to see you riding with it on your handle-bars.”
    “They’d laugh louder if you did that with a roach,” said the pilot.
    Sergeant Pilot Franck came up to them. “I have been thinking about what you say yesterday,” he said. “It is I that should tell you how to weave. Right weave … Left weave … So. If every time you weave exactly in the same way, then we run up for ver’ short time.”
    “All right if I could weave the same each time. I think you’ll find I go thirty degrees one way and fifty the other.”
    “If you were German,” said the Dane severely, “you would always weave the same.”
    “If I was a German,” said the pilot equably, “I’d be flying a Heinkel and kicking your bloody arse because you didn’t say ‘Heil Hitler’ before you spoke. All right, let’s have a crack at it that way, and see how it goes.” He turned round to the crew of four, gathered around him in their flying kit. “We’re going to practise a few run-ups this morning, taking the gasometer at Princes Risborough as the target. Eight thousand feet.” He turned to the wireless operator, a pale lad from Stockton-on-Tees. “Leech, you can do the navigation, and Phillips, you can help him if he gets it wrong.” He did all he could to ensure that everybody understood the wireless and the navigation and the guns.
    They took off presently, and went climbing away into the distance. It was nearly two hours later when they landed back again, taxied in, and wheeled round into wind at the dispersal point with a grinding squeal of brakes. In turn the engines died and came to rest.
    Marshall stood up beside Gunnar, who had landed the machine, with Sergeant Phillips’ notebook in his hand. “Take out runs three and seven, when you weren’t on,” he said. “The rest go fifty-two seconds, fifty-four, forty-four, forty-four, forty-one, forty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, thirty-nine. It’s not bad.”
    They