“Twelve-inch?”
“Shrapnel.”
“Ah,” said Jerome complacently, “that was our little show. Glad you all enjoyed yourselves.”
“Yes,” cut in Brakespear quickly, “you flushed ’em very nicely down south that night. We Destroyers had a very pretty little dust-up.”
“What did you do, Jerry?” asked Aughtlone. “We all seem to have been more or less mixed up in the affair—Foster, were you embroiled?”
The Minelayer chuckled. “Indirectly,” he said, “but nothing very spectacular. We’ve usually got home and tucked each other up in by-bye when the fireworks start, in our line of business!”
“Come on, Jerry,” said Mayhew; “what did you do in the Great War, daddy?”
“Well,” said the stout one, suffering Hughes to replenish his glass, “well, personally, I didn’t do a hell of a lot that night. But the—what d’ye call it?—cumulative effect wasn’t too bad. That was the night they sprang a new stunt on us. Things that looked like balls of fire—red-hot liquid stuff. I got a lump on my fuselage and it ran down the plane and dripped off—like phosphorus streaming off the blade of an oar in the dark.... I had a 530-lb. bomb tucked under my seat and I was nervous.... I’m getting old, anyway. Dam’ nearly thirty.”
“Start at the beginning,” said Aughtlone hungrily.
“No, no,” interrupted Longridge in a low voice. “Let him tell it in his own comic way. Jerry always begins somewhere near the end.”