“Trouble with you youngsters is that you’ve been fed up on poobah. And the myth of the fearless air fighter. Put it out of your mind. There’s no such thing. Some are less afraid than others. Some are drunker--take your choice. Class dismissed.” Hoyt grinned. “Go get cleaned up. We’ll jog into Amiens for tiffin. Tender in half an hour. Tell Trent and P-B.” They spent most of the afternoon at Charlie’s Bar with some of the men from the artillery observation squadron. For dinner they went to the Du Rhin and the glasses flowed red. Afterward, in another place, there was a fight, as usual, and chairs crashed like match sticks, until whistles sounded outside and the A. P. M.’s car, siren screaming, raced up the street. They poured out into the alleyway and ran, leaving the waiter praying in high, shrieking French. Trent had a bottle with him. They rode all the way home singing and shouting to high heaven, forgetting that there were two empty chairs in the mess and that there might be more to-morrow. “Take the cylinders out of my kidneys, Take the scutcheon pins out of my brain, Take the cam box from under my backbone And assemble the engine again!” They were good fellows--Billy Hoyt, P-B, Pat, and Ray Trent. Have ’nother li’l’ drink. They roared along like a Juggernaut, with the exhaust splitting the night air. Sometimes they were on the road and sometimes they were off. No one cared so long as they kept hurtling into the darkness. Phelps-Barrington was fast asleep. Pat woke him up at the airdrome and tumbled him into the hut. They stumbled over a kit bag in the doorway. P-B straightened up suddenly. “Good-bye, Mac, old lad, sleep tight.” Trent kicked the bag out of the way. “Damned adjutant! Take P-B in with you, Pat. I’m bunking with the skipper. Might have the decency to take Mac’s kit over to squadron office and not leave it lying around the passage. ’Night.” Paterson was quite sober. He tumbled P-B into bed and stood for a moment at the open window, staring out across the ground mist that billowed knee high in the faint night breeze. He rested his elbows on the sill and hid his face in his trembling hands. If he could only be like the others--casual--calloused. If he had less imagination--more sand--stamina--something. MacClintock had planned this night himself, at breakfast. Yardley had left a letter addressed and stamped on his window sill. Paterson’s mind jumped miles to the eastward. He saw the two blackened engines lying somewhere in the bleak fields beyond, ploughed into the ground, with their mats of twisted wires coiled around them in a hideous trap. Their families would get word to-morrow. “Missing,” it would read. And then later: “Previously reported missing, now reported killed in action.” And to-morrow--perhaps his own family. Why can’t it be quick?