In three minutes the door banged open noisily, and the Flight Leader clumped heavily in. Such of his features as could be seen for a leather helmet coming low on his forehead and close round his cheeks, and a deep collar turned up about his chin, disclosed an expression of bad temper and dissatisfaction.
"Hullo, Blanky," said the Major cheerfully. "Made rather a long job of it, didn't you? Any Huns about?"
Now Blanky had an established and well-deserved reputation for bad language, and although usually a pilot is expected more or less to modify any pronounced features in language in addressing his C.O., there are times when he fails to do so, and times when the C.O. wisely ignores the failure. This apparently was one of the times, and the Major listened without remark to a stream of angry and sulphurous revilings of the luck, the Huns, the fight the Flight had just come through, and finally—or one might say firstly, at intervals throughout, and finally—the Flight itself.
"Three blessed quarters of a bloomin' hour we were scrappin'," said Blanky savagely, "and I suppose half the blistering machines in the blinking Flight are shot up to everlastin' glory. I know half the flamin' controls and flyin' wires are blanky well cut on my goldarn bus. And two confounded Huns' brimstone near got me, because the cock-eyed idiot who should have been watching my plurry tail went hare-in' off to heaven and the Hot Place. But no-dash-body watched any-darn-body's tail. Went split-armin' around the ruddy sky like a lot of runaway racin' million-horse-power comets. Flight! Dot, dash, asterisk! Formation! Stars, stripes, and spangles——"
He broke off with a gesture of despair and disgust. None of this harangue was very informing, except it made clear that the Flight had been in a fight, and that Blanky was not pleased with the result or the Flight. The Major questioned gently for further details, but hearing the note of another descending engine Blanky went off at a tangent again. Here one of them came ... about half an hour after him ... wait till he saw them ... he'd tell them all about it ... and so on.
"Did you down any Huns?" asked the Major, and Blanky told him No, not one single, solitary, stream-line Hun crashed, and couldn't even swear to any out of control. Before the Major could say more, the office door opened to admit a leather-clad pilot grinning cheerfully all over his face. Blanky whirled and burst out on him, calling him this, that, and the other, demanding to know what the, where the, why the, advising him to go'n learn to drive a beastly wheel-barrow, and buy a toy gun with a cork on a string to shoot with. The bewildered pilot strove to make some explanation, to get a word in edgeways, but he hadn't a hope until Blanky paused for breath. "I didn't break formation for more'n a minute——" he began, when Blanky interrupted explosively, "Break formation—no, 'cos there wasn't a frescoed formation left to break. It had gone to gilt-edged glory, and never came back. But I was there, and your purple place was behind me. Why the which did you leave there?"
"Because I'd winged the Hun that was sitting on your tail," said the other indignantly. "I had to go after him to get him."
"Get him," said Blanky contemptuously. "Well, why didn't you?"