ns of gestures. I am ready to believe everything but the
incident about the port. That doesn't sound plausible. A
Frenchman would have thrown his watch before making such a
sacrifice!

VIII

ONE HUNDRED HOURS

A little more than a year after our first meeting in the Paris
restaurant which has so many pleasant memories for us, Drew completed
his first one hundred hours of flight over the lines, an event in the
life of an airman which calls for a celebration of some sort.
Therefore, having been granted leave for the afternoon, the two of us
came into the old French town of Bar-le-Duc, by the toy train which
wanders down from the Verdun sector. We had dinner in one of those
homelike little places where the food is served by the proprietor
himself. On this occasion it was served hurriedly, and the bill
presented promptly at eight o'clock. Our host was very sorry, but "les
sales Boches, vous savez, messieurs?" They had come the night before:
a dozen houses destroyed, women and children killed and maimed. With a
full moon to guide them, they would be sure to return to-night. "Ah,
cette guerre! Quand sera-t-elle finie?" He offered us a refuge until
our train should leave. Usually, he said, he played solitaire while
waiting for the Germans, but with houses tumbling about one's ears, he
much preferred company. "And my wife and I are old people. She is very
deaf, heureusement. She hears nothing."

J. B. declined the invitation. "A brave way that would be to finish
our evening!" he said as we walked down the silent street. "I wanted
to say, 'Monsieur, I have just finished my first one hundred hours of
flight at the front.' But he wouldn't have known what that means."

I said, "No, he wouldn't have known." Then we had no further talk for
about two hours. A few soldiers, late arrivals, were prowling about in
the shadow of the houses, searching for food and a warm kitchen where
they might eat it. Some insistent ones pounded on the door of a
restaurant far in the distance.

"Dites donc, patron! Nous avons faim, nom de Dieu! Est-ce-que tout le
monde est mort ici?"

"Only a host of phantom listeners,
That dwelt in the lone house then,
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men."

It was that kind of silence, profound, tense, ghostlike. We walked
through street after street, from one end of the to