“Why, certainly,” said the colonel pleasantly, adding after a moment's hesitation, “is there anything wrong, Dunbar? Are you ill?”
“No, sir.” Barry's voice had the resonant quality of a cello string. “I mean, yes, sir,” he corrected. “I am ill. The atmosphere surrounding such a tale is nauseating to me.”
In the horrified silence that followed his remark, he walked out from the room. Upon his ears, as he stood in the ante-room, trembling with the violence of his passion, a burst of laughter fell. A sudden wrath like a hot flame swept his body. He wheeled in his tracks, tore open the door, and with head high and face set, strode to his place at the table and sat down.
Astonishment beyond all words held the company in tense stillness. From Barry's face they looked toward the colonel, who, too dumfounded for speech or action, sat gazing at his chaplain. Then from the end of the table a few places down from Barry, a voice was heard.
“Feel better, Dunbar?” The cool, clear voice cut through the tense silence like the zip of a sword.
“I do, thank you, sir,” looking him straight in the eye.
“The fresh air, doubtless,” continued the cool voice. “I always find myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective antidote for threatening vertigo. I remember once—” continued the speaker, dropping into a conversational tone, and leaning across the table slightly toward Barry, “I was in the room with a company of men—” And the speaker entered upon a long and none too interesting relation of an experience of his, the point of which no one grasped, but the effect of which every one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in his military equipment.
“Say, the old doc is a lifesaver, sure enough,” said a young subaltern, answering to the name of “Sally,” colloquial for Salford, as he stood amid a circle of officers gathered in the smoking room a few minutes later. “A lifesaver,” repeated Sally, with emphasis. “He can have me for his laboratory collection after I'm through.”
“He is one sure singing bird,” said another sub, a stout, overgrown boy by the name of Booth. “The nerve of him,” added Booth in admiration.
“Nerve!” echoed a young captain, “but what about the pilot's nerve?”