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a rasp. “You treat it like a bunch of playboys in a private flying club. Well, by God I’ll see you all in hell first. I’ll kick every ass in this squadron until either you make yourselves worthy of it or my right leg gets worn to a bloody stub.” He clipped Cox with his shoulder as he strode past him and flung open the door. The faces of the clerks were diplomatically blank. “Get ashovel and fill in that disgusting hole, Cox,” he ordered. “You break the shovel and I’ll have you court-martialled. Go.”
    Mother Cox went. It was a very long hole, and darkness had fallen by the time he filled the last of it.
    The next day was the last day of August. A sea-fog reached Kingsmere before dawn. By eight-thirty, when the pilots assembled in one of the hangars, it was still blowing across the field in slow drifts of smoky gray, chilling everything it touched.
    â€œI see the war-clouds are gathering again,” Patterson said. A couple of heads turned. He was reading a newspaper.
    â€œAre those new war-clouds?” Stickwell asked. “Or are they the same old war-clouds that have been gathering all year?”
    Patterson consulted his newspaper. “It doesn’t say,” he said. “All it says is the war-clouds are gathering and once again Europe is at the crossroads.”
    â€œThat’s a bloody silly place to be,” Cattermole remarked. “I mean, what with the war-clouds gathering and so on. A bloke could get jolly wet.”
    â€œOur fearless leader has an umbrella,” Patterson said. “They’ve got a photograph here to prove it.” He raised his newspaper to show them.
    â€œBut have they got a picture of a war-cloud?” Stickwell insisted. “I don’t trust these newspaper people. I bet they can’t tell the difference between strato-cumulus and cauliflower
au gratin.”
    â€œCan you?” Cox asked.
    â€œOf course I can. Cauliflower
au gratin
is the stuff we chuck at the guests on mess nights.”
    â€œAnd, in your case, probably miss,” Cox said.
    â€œNonsense. Tripe. Utter piffle.”
    â€œI thought Strato Cumulus was an Italian film star,” Cattermole said.
    â€œCome off it, Sticky,” Cox said contemptuously. He was still feeling his blisters from yesterday’s shoveling. “How often did you hit the target at that armament practice camp? Never.”
    â€œNo, but once or twice I nearly got the plane towing it.”
    Cox sniffed.
    â€œI always used too much deflection, you see,” Stickwell explained. “Those training things are far too slow for me. My brainworks at lightning speed. One of the drawbacks of genius, suppose.”
    â€œThat was a remarkably funny joke I made about Strato Cumulus,” Cattermole said, looking up into the gloom of the roof, “and not one of you blighters laughed. Not one.”
    â€œJoke? You made a joke, Moggy?” Patterson put his paper away. “Sorry I missed it. Affairs of state, you understand. Never mind, I can give you a minute now. Tell it again.” He cocked his head attentively.
    Cattermole sucked in his stomach, and stared over their heads. “My talent is too fine and rare a thing to be wasted on the wind,” he said loftily.
    Patterson waited. “That’s not very funny,” he said. “Sure you haven’t left something out?”
    Cattermole walked away and began idly kicking the tires of the nearest Hurricane.
    â€œActually, it was funnier the first time,” Stickwell said. “When Moggy said he thought Cauliflower Au Gratin was a French railway station.”
    â€œSo it is,” Patterson said.
    â€œTest the lights,” Flip Moran said to Cattermole. Moran was “B” flight commander, a stubby Ulsterman with an accent that gave his words a hard cutting-edge. It was his Hurricane that Cattermole was kicking. “Try the horn, why don’t you?”
    â€œSomewhere