Inside one of the hangars, as they passed, Paterson saw something that drew a thin, wet gauze across his eyeballs. On a rough bench just beside the open flap sat a man with his eyes closed and his lips drawn tightly into a straight bluish line. His flying coat was rolled up behind his head for a pillow, and his tunic had been unbuttoned and cut away from his left shoulder. The white of his flesh showed weirdly in the gloom, like the belly of a dead fish. Just below the shoulder, the white was crumpled and reddened as if a clawed paw had been drawn across it. One man was holding his other hand, while another probed and cleaned and dabbed with little puffs of snowy cotton that turned quickly to pink and then to a deep brown. Hoyt shrugged. “Lucky man. That’s Mallory. He was Number Four this afternoon. We never saw a thing. Just happened. Funny.” And he smiled. “That’s why I was so keen to get you. Can’t tell how long it will be before Mallory gets around again, and I’ve got one vacancy in the flight already.” He shrugged. “You’ll see a lot of that here--get used to it. It doesn’t mean a thing as long as you get back alive.” Paterson looked at him sharply. He wanted to ask him how many didn’t get back alive. He wanted to know what had caused the other vacancy in the flight. But people didn’t ask those things. People merely nodded casually and went on. “I suppose not,” he said. They tramped on across the airdrome. “Here we are,” said Hoyt. He kicked open the hut door and groped down the dark passageway, with Paterson after him. Presently he pushed back another door and yanked at a tattered window curtain. The new pilot saw a tiny room, with two washstands, a cot, a folding chair, and a cracked mirror. In a corner were his kit bag and haversack. He pulled out his own cot and chair and set them up; meanwhile Hoyt threw himself down on the other cot and let his cigarette smoke dribble straight upward into the gloom of the pine-raftered roof. Presently he spoke. “This is a queer war,” he said; “full of queer things, and the queerest of these is charity.” He laughed in the darkness, and the tip of his cigarette became suddenly pink as he drew the smoke into his lungs. “What was your school?” “Winchester,” said Paterson. “Right,” said Hoyt. “Remember your first day? This is it over again. They’ve fed you up on poobah at your training ’drome and down at the Pool. They always do. It’s part of the system. Just take it for what it is worth and forget the rest. If you want to know anything, come to me and I’ll tell you as well as I can. I’ve been here three months. When I came, I came just as you did to-day, pucka green and afraid to the marrow--afraid of uncertainty. You get over that shortly.