I took them up the castle rock from the railway station in the dark. After the first piece, which was tricky, there would have been little climbing necessary if I had followed a zig-zag path; but I preferred to lead the colonel up several fairly stiff pitches. The others kept to the path. When we reached the top he was out of breath, a bit shaky, and most affable—almost affectionate. ‘That was a damn good climb you showed us.’ So I said: ‘We’ve not reached the top yet.’ ‘Where are we going now?’ he asked. I said: ‘Up that turret.’ We climbed into the castle and walked through the chapel into the north-western tower. It was pitch dark. I took them left into the turret which adjoined the tower but rose some twenty feet higher. The sky showed above, about the size of an orange. The turret had once had a spiral staircase, but the central core had been broken down after the Cromwellian siege; only an edging of stones remained on the walls. This edging did not become continuous until about the second spiral. We struck matches and I started up. The colonel swore and sweated, but followed. I showed him the trick of getting over the worst gap in the stones, which was too wide to bridge with one’s stride, by crouching, throwing one’s body forward and catching the next stone with one’s hands; a scramble and he was there. The airman and my brother remained below. I was glad when we reached the second spiral. We climbed perhaps a hundred and twenty feet to the top. When we were safely down again most of the whisky was gone. So I said: ‘Now let’s visit the concert party.’ I had heard the audience dispersing, from the top of the turret. We visited the artistes. The colonel was most courteous to the women, especially the blonde soprano, but he took a great dislike to the tenor, a Welshman, and told him that he was no bloody good as a singer. He cross-examined him on his military service and was delighted to find that he had been for some reason or other exempted. He called him a louse and a bloody skrim-shanker and a lot more until the blonde soprano, who was his wife, came to the rescue and threatened to chuck the colonel out. He went out grinning, kissing his hand to the soprano and telling the tenor to kiss the place where he wore no hat. The tenor turned courageous and shouted out something about reading the Scriptures and how morally unjustifiable it was to fight. We all laughed till we wheezed. Then the colonel said we must get a drink; he knocked up a hotel barman and even got inside the bar, but the barman refused to serve him and threatened to call the police. The colonel did not raid the shelves as he would have done half an hour before when the whisky was fiercer in him; he merely told the barman what he thought of the Welsh, broke a glass or two and walked out. ‘Let’s go home and have some more bridge.’ He walked arm-in-arm with me down the hill and confided as one family man to another that his nerves were all in