We had hardly settled down to Mess when an orderly, armed with a buff slip, shot through the door, narrowly missed colliding with the soup, and pulled up by Grigson’s chair.  Grigson is our Flight Commander—­one of those rugged and impenetrable individuals who seem impervious to any kind of shock.  There is a legend that on one occasion four machine-gun bullets actually hit him and bounced off, which gave the imitative Hun the idea of armour-plating his machines.

Grigson took the slip and read, slowly and paraphrastically:  “Night operations.  A machine will be detailed to leave the ground at 10:30 pip emma and lay three fresh eggs on the railway-station at ——.  At the special request of the G.O.C.R.F.C., Lieutenant Maude, the well-known strafer, will oblige.  Co-operation by B and C Flights.”

Lieutenant Maude, commonly known by a loose association of ideas as Toddles, buried a heightened complexion in a plate of now tepid soup.  Someone having pulled him out and wiped him down, he was understood to remark that he would have preferred longer notice, as it had been his intention that night to achieve a decisive victory in the Flight ping-pong tournament.

“Oh, but, Toddles,” came a voice, “think how pleased old Fritz will be to see you.  You’ll miss the garden party, but you’ll be in nice time for the fire-works—­Verey lights and flaming onions and pretty searchlights.  Don’t you love searchlights, Toddles?”

Toddles stretched out an ominous hand towards the siphon, and was only deterred from his fell intention by the entry of the C.O.

“Oh, Grigson,” said the C.O. pleasantly, “the Wing have just rung through to say they want that raid done at once, so you might get your man up toute suite.”

Toddles was exactly halfway through his fish.

Now, though Toddles has never to my knowledge appeared before the C.O. at dead of night attired in pink silk pyjamas, begging with tears in his eyes to be allowed to perform those duties which the dawn would in any case impose upon him (this practice is not really very common in the R.F.C.), he is a thoroughly sound and conscientious little beggar.  And, making allowances for the fallibility of human inventions, and the fact that two other young gentlemen were also engaged in the congenial task of making structural alterations to the railway station at ——­, Toddles comes out of the affair with an untarnished reputation.

Whether it was that his more fastidious taste in architecture detained him I do not know, but it was fully ten minutes after the others had landed before we who were watching on the aerodrome became aware that Toddles was coming home to roost.  The usual signals were exchanged, and Toddles finished up a graceful descent by making violent contact with the ground, bouncing seven times and knocking over two flares before finally coming to rest.  His machine appeared to be leaning on its left elbow in a slightly intoxicated condition.