"Well, turn that stinking lamp down, then. Lord only knows when I shall get the bath fixed, and I've worn these pyjamas a fortnight already, I can't afford to get 'em any blacker," said Wandesforde irrelevantly. "Have some cake. Home-made, best dripping and a bit sad in the middle. Specially recommended against presentiments. You won't? You don't know what's good. So you think you're going to glory to-morrow, do you? Bet you a fiver you don't."
"Done with that. If I lose, I'll not be called on to pay," said Denis, with a wintry smile. Wandesforde lay back in his comfortable bunk—he had swung himself a hammock made of curtains, and stuffed it with straw—and folded his arms under his head.
"Well, all I can suggest is you dream of a filter and square things up that way. I wouldn't like to go out yet. I want to bring down a Hun or two first. We shall be doing them in by dozens before we're through. Did I tell you I ran into Tommy Wyatt yesterday? He was very full of a new French dodge for firing a machine gun through the propeller. Silly business to get killed when there's so much fun on hand, what? Think better of it, old thing."
"I never said I was goin' to get killed. I said my bus would come to grief, which is quite a different thing. It's not likely we shall both of us get back, is it? Bombing Zeppelin sheds isn't a healthy job. We're safe to get Archied; and from Aix it's an uncommonly long run home."
"You're in a cheerful mood to-night."
"Sorry. What I'm tryin' to drive into your thick head is that if I do have to come down, I shall make for Rochehaut."
"Of course if you've made up your mind to come down—"
"I've not made up my mind to come down. But I feel like it," said Denis obstinately.
"All right, all right. But I can't see how you think you'll ever get the chance of making for Rochehaut or whatever you call the place. An internment camp in the Fatherland is the common fate." Denis again preserved silence. "Oh, you and the bus are going to alight in some conveniently uninhabited spot? That the idea?"
"It's possible, isn't it?"