"Tim, where did you win that?"
"Hush! That will keep till another time," replied Tim.
"But, Tim, how came you here?"
In a few words the attendant told him how he had at last, after persistent effort, gained a footing in the services, and, though only the humble post of sick-ward attendant on a hospital ship had been offered to him, yet he had gladly accepted it.
"And so you see by a stroke of luck you happen to be one of my patients. And I am going to take you all the way home."
"Home! Blighty! Home!" murmured the patient. "Are we on the way home?"
"Yes, we are on the way to Blighty. We are now only a matter of twenty miles from the Nab Light at the eastern end of the Isle of Wight. In another two hours we should be in Southampton Water."
"Thank God!" replied Dastral quietly and reverently, as he closed his eyes, bewildered by all he had heard. But he opened them again shortly, and said:
"Tim, war is a ghastly thing. I hope it will soon be over, for it turns brave men who might otherwise be friends into enemies. But I am happy to think that you have won that decoration."
"Tut, tut! Dastral," replied the other. "Do you know that the King has conferred upon you the honour of a C.B., and also made you a Wing Commander. Do you know also that the whole country is talking of your fight with Himmelman, the German air-fiend?"