The Flight Leader, hurrying his dinner to catch up to the others, went on to tell some bald details of the fight. Jack sat drinking it in, although it was rather a technical and air-slangy account for him to understand properly, and all the time he could not get it out of his mind how extraordinary it was that this man and the others who half an hour ago had been fighting for their lives, shooting men down, hearing (and seeing as he gathered from the story) bullets crack past, tearing home at a hundred and odd miles an hour with the reek and roar of a big battle beneath them, with shells puffing and coughing about them as they flew, should now be sitting, washed, bathed, cleanly and comfortably dressed, at a full-course dinner, with flowers on the table and a good band playing outside. He had seen plenty of fighting himself, but with such a difference, with such a prolonged misery of short sleep, scratch meals, hard physical work, living in mud and filth and dirt and stench, under constant fear of death or mutilation, that this air-fighting appeared by contrast--well, the C.O. had it right, "living and fighting like gentlemen." The port went round, followed by the coffee, cigarettes, and liqueurs, the niceties of Mess etiquette, Jack noticed, being very punctiliously observed, and no man touching his port or lighting his cigarette before the Major touched and lit his, none moving from the table until after the port had been round, and so on. The evening finished with a couple of very jolly hours in the ante-room where the gramophone took the place of the band in alternate turns with musical pilots at the piano. A group hung round the open fireplace chatting and joking, another round the piano where one pilot played musical pranks, sang topical air songs, and played seductive melodies that set half a dozen couples "ragging" round the room, and two or three tables collected for Bridge and Poker. Jack, revelling in the comfort and pleasantness of the whole thing, was haled at last by Jerry into a set for Bridge, and played for an hour just the sort of game he liked--good enough to be interesting, free and easy and talkative enough not to be stiff and boringly business-like. He was very thoughtful as he undressed for bed--a comfortable camp bed, with a soft pillow, and pyjamas--and Tom looked at him with a glimmer of a smile. "Wondering if you'll put in for a transfer to Flying Corps?" he asked. Jack was a little startled. "Well, something like that--yes," he admitted. "You do seem to have such a ripping good time of it, and right bang in the war, too. It's amazing." "'Tisn't all pie, all the time, y'know," said his brother seriously. "Pretty strenuous at times." Jack grunted scornfully, with his mind on what strenuous times in the line meant. "We'll talk it over to-morrow," said Tom. "Must get a sleep now. I'm on dawn patrol."