am caught Nicky in midair and
shattered him to shreds.

Nuddle's whole back was obliterated and half a corpse fell forward,
headless, on the deck. Davidge's right arm was ripped from the
shoulder and his hat vanished, all but the brim.

Mamise was untouched by the bombardment, but the downward rain of
fragments tore her flesh as she lay sidelong.

The bomb, exploding in the open air, lost much of its efficiency, but
the part of the ship nearest was crumpled like an old tomato-can that
a boy has placed on a car track to be run over.

The crash with its reverberations threw the throngs about the
speakers' stands into various panics, some running away from the
volcano, some toward it. Many people were knocked down and trampled.

Larrey and his men were the first to reach the deck. They found
Davidge and Mamise in a pool of blood rapidly enlarging as the torn
arteries in Davidge's shoulder spouted his life away. A quick
application of first aid saved him until the surgeon attached to the
shipyard could reach him.

Mamise's injuries were painful and cruel, but not dangerous. Of
Jake Nuddle there was not enough left to assure Larrey of his
identification. Of Nicky Easton there was so little trace that the
first searchers did not know that he had perished.

Davidge and Mamise were taken to the hospital, and when Davidge was
restored to consciousness his first words were a groan of awful
satisfaction:

"I got a German!"

When he learned that he had no longer a right arm he smiled again and
muttered:

"It's great to be wounded for your country."

Which was a rather inelegant paraphrase of the classic "_Dulce et
decorum_," but caught its spirit admirably.

Of Jake Nuddle he knew nothing and forgot everything till some days
later, when he was permitted to speak to Mamise, in whose welfare he
was more interested than his own, and the story of whose unimportant
wounds harrowed him more than his own.

Her voice came to him over the bedside telephone. After an exchange of
the inevitable sympathies and regrets and tendernesses, Mamise
sighed:

"Well, we're luckier than poor Jake."

"We are? What happened to him?"

"He was killed, horribly. His pitiful wife! Abbie has been here and
she is inconsolable. He was her idol--not a very pretty one, but idols
are not often pretty. It's too terribly bad, isn't it?"

Davidge's bewildered silence was his epitaph for Jake. Even though he
were dead, one could hardly praise hi