without faltering, to the
boy's bed. He had a picture, printed indelibly on his brain, of a girl
with a sweet set face, of a gaping boy, stirred into some semblance of
remembrance by the familiar noise around him. And then, in the
darkness, he made his way towards her.

There was a deafening crash close to him, and a fragment tore through
the side of the tent. He could see the blinding flash, and
involuntarily he ducked his head. Then, running and stumbling, he
reached her. He felt her standing rigid in the darkness, and even at
such a moment he felt a sudden rush of joy as her hands come out to
meet him.

"Lie down," he shouted, "lie down at once. . . ."

"The boy," she cried. "Help me with him, Derek."

Together they picked him up, fumbling in the darkness, and laid him on
the ground beside his bed. Then Vane took her arm, and shouted in her
ear, "Lie down, I tell you, lie down . . . quite flat." Obediently she
lay down, and he stretched himself beside her on the ground. To the
crashing of the bombs were now added the shouts and curses of men
outside; and once Margaret made an effort to rise.

"The patients, Derek. Let me go."

With his one sound arm he kept her down by force. "You can do
nothing," he said roughly. He felt her trembling against him, and a
wave of fury against the airmen above took hold of him. He was no
novice to bombing; there had been weeks on end when the battalion had
been bombed nightly. But then it had been part of the show--what they
expected; here it was so different.

A sense of utter impotence filled his mind, coupled with a raging
passion at the danger to the girl beside him. And suddenly his lips
sought hers.

"It's all right, my dear," he kept on saying, "quite all right. It'll
be over soon." And so almost unconscious of what they said or did,
they lay and listened to the tornado of Death around them. . . .

It is on record that one man once said that he thought it was rather
amusing to be in a raid. That man was a liar. He was also a
fool. . . . To be bombed is poisonous, rather more poisonous than to
be shelled. If there are no dug-outs there is only one thing to be
done, and that is what Vane was doing.

To lie flat on the ground minimises the danger except from a direct
hit; and a direct hit is remarkably sudden. And so--since every
occupant of Number 13 was well aware of this fact, approximately five
seconds elapsed after the light went out before a