“And in the morning ‘Peace, perfect peace’ from the flagship and ‘Back to harbour,’” said the gunnery lieutenant from the Battle Fleet. “The usual weary stunt. You bagged a Zepp, though, didn’t you?” “Yes. Inquisitive blighter. You’d have enjoyed that.” “Twelve-inch?” “Shrapnel.” “Ah,” said Jerome complacently, “that was our little show. Glad you all enjoyed yourselves.” “Yes,” cut in Brakespear quickly, “you flushed ’em very nicely down south that night. We Destroyers had a very pretty little dust-up.” “What did you do, Jerry?” asked Aughtlone. “We all seem to have been more or less mixed up in the affair--Foster, were you embroiled?” The Minelayer chuckled. “Indirectly,” he said, “but nothing very spectacular. We’ve usually got home and tucked each other up in by-bye when the fireworks start, in _our_ line of business!” “Come on, Jerry,” said Mayhew; “what did you do in the Great War, daddy?” “Well,” said the stout one, suffering Hughes to replenish his glass, “well, personally, I didn’t do a hell of a lot that night. But the--what d’ye call it?--cumulative effect wasn’t too bad. That was the night they sprang a new stunt on us. Things that looked like balls of fire--red-hot liquid stuff. I got a lump on my fuselage and it ran down the plane and dripped off--like phosphorus streaming off the blade of an oar in the dark.... I had a 530-lb. bomb tucked under my seat and I was nervous.... I’m getting old, anyway. Dam’ nearly thirty.” “Start at the beginning,” said Aughtlone hungrily. “No, no,” interrupted Longridge in a low voice. “Let him tell it in his own comic way. Jerry always begins somewhere near the end.” The stout one assumed an injured expression. “What’s wrong? I _am_ starting at the beginning.... We went up along the coast. I took a squadron of ’planes: Flight Leaders: two Canucks, a New Zealander, and an Oxford undergraduate who’d lost his young woman in the _Lusitania_ and didn’t care if it snowed ink: a Yank who’d been in Belgium when the Huns started what he called ‘getting gay’--newspaper reporter or something--and a Yorkshire dog-fancier--a quirk,[6] but full-out. They were all full-out, as a matter of fact: good lads, especially the Yank.” The narrator paused. “He’d seen a baby in a butcher’s shop--in Liège, I think it was. The Huns had cut its hands off and hung it on a hook.... He was not so much a scientific bomber, really, as zealous. Very zealous.... I lost the quirk, and one of my Canucks, but the other got back all right.” “Alpha and Omega,” cut in Foster. “The beginning and the end. Now, Jerry, let’s have the story.” “Hang it, I’ve told you the story. You know the rest, anyhow. I dropped my contribution to the gaiety of nations, and the lock-gates went. There were half a dozen destroyers in harbour, and they got the wind up them and bolted for the open sea----”