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now stiffening, across his bicycle basket and tied it insecurely there with string. Then he rode back to the camp.
    The guard at the gate grinned broadly as he rode into the camp with a very large fish drooping at his handle-bars, and took occasion to salute him very formally. Marshall returned the salute and rode on to the mess past laughing groups of aircraftmen and W.A.A.F.s; nobody in the camp would ever say again that he could not catch fish. He parked the bike and, carrying the fish, went through into the kitchen and induced the W.A.A.F. cook to put it on the scales. It weighed eleven and a quarter pounds.
    “My!” she said. “That is a nice bit of fish now, isn’t it?” Her words were like music to him. “Will you have it stuffed, Mr. Marshall, like we did the other?”
    He agreed, and she gave him a dish for it and arranged it stretched out at full length, and he carried it through into thedining-room and put it on the table for display. Then he went through to the ante-room to see whom he could find to show it to.
    It was half-past five. There were half a dozen officers sitting reading in arm-chairs, and two W.A.A.F. officers looking at the illustrated papers. Marshall looked around for Pat Johnson to confound him, but Pat was not there, nor Lines, nor Humphries. Davy would have to do. Davy was reading about Lemmy Caution and his gorgeous dames, and detached his mind with an effort as Marshall said:
    “I caught a bloody fine fish this afternoon. Come and have a look at it.”
    “Where is it?”
    “In the dining-room.”
    “See it some other time, old boy.” The dame had brunette chestnut hair that fell down on a bare shoulder, and slim bare ankles thrust into white mules, and grey eyes, and curves in all the right places, a small black automatic pistol that pointed straight at Mr. Caution’s heart. It was asking too much to leave that for a dead fish.
    Slightly damped, Marshall looked around. None of the old sweats of the Wing, the men that he had known for many months, happened to be in. There were only new arrivals that he did not know so well, officers who had been drafted to the station in the last month to replace casualties. There was a Canadian that he had hardly spoken to since he arrived a week before, just getting to his feet. Marshall said: “Like to come and see my fish?”
    “What kind of fish?”
    “Pike. Eleven and a quarter pounds.”
    “I guess that’s pretty big, isn’t it?”
    “Not bad.”
    “Pike. Is that the same as a muskie—what we call a muskellunge in Canada?”
    “I think it is. Come and have a look—it’s in the dining-room.”
    The other said: “I’m real sorry, but I’ve got a date. I’m late for it already. Say, you want to come to Canada one day. I’ll take you where you can get a muskie, thirty pounds, any day of the week. Gee, I wish I was back there!” He waved his hand. “Be seeing you.”
    The glamour was fading fast. Outside the light was going; the sun was setting behind trees in a clear sky. A W.A.A.F.mess waitress came in and put on the lights and began to draw the black-out. Marshall lit a cigarette and looked around.
    He saw Pilot Officer Forbes sitting pretending to read the
Illustrated London News
and staring at the coal-scuttle. Pilot Officer Forbes had been sitting and pretending to read things for three days now, since Stuttgart. They all knew what was wrong with him; it was Bobbie Fraser. But what could anybody do?
    Marshall hesitated, and then crossed over to him. “I caught a bloody nice fish to-day,” he said gently. All the conceit had gone out of his voice. “Like to come and have a look at it? It’s in the dining-room.”
    Forbes said without moving: “I don’t think so.”
    Marshall said in a low tone: “Come on, old boy. Snap out of it.”
    Forbes raised his head. “If you don’t muck off and let me alone,” he said, “I’ll kick your bloody face in.”
    Marshall moved away towards the table with the periodicals upon