(RANDOM BULLET jumps over the sandbags into the dug-out, and
    jibbers impotently at CECIL, who glances up at him with a
    look of disgust.)

RANDOM BULLET.  Ping!  Ping.  It’s me he’s afraid of.  He daren’t stir a yard from this wall, or I’d tear his brains out.  Ping!  Ping!

MOTHER EARTH.  Who are you, Monster?

RANDOM BULLET.  I’m Random Bullet.  I am a monster, I am!  Ping!

MOTHER EARTH.  Who sent you, anyway?

RANDOM BULLET.  Why, the idiots behind the other wall, over there!  Sometimes I jump at them, and sometimes I jump over here.  I don’t care which way it is; but I like tearing their brains out, I do.  I don’t care which lot it is.

MOTHER EARTH.  What madness!

FATHER SUN (indignantly).  On my day too!

RANDOM BULLET.  Mad!  I should think they were!  Never mind, they give me some fun!  Ping!  So long, I’m off, going to jump at the other fellows, back in a second if you like to wait.

    (RANDOM BULLET jumps out of sight, and MOTHER EARTH and
    FATHER SUN move disgustedly away.)

CECIL (getting up).  Mad!  By God, we are mad!  Curse the war!  Curse the fools who started it!  Why did I ever come out here?  What a way to spend a morning in June!

    (Curtain.)

ACT II.  MIDDAY

    SCENE. The same. CECIL as before, but sweltering in the
    sun.  Enter the SPIRIT OF THIRST.

THIRST. Oh for a drink!  Water, anything!  I could drink a bath full.  What a place to spend a June day in!  When one thinks of all the drinks one might be having, it is really infuriating.  Gad!  The very thought of ’em makes me feel quite poetic!  Think of the great barrels of still cider in cool Devonshire cellars!  Think of the sour refreshing wine we used to get in Italy!  And the iced cocktails of Colombo!  And Pimm’s No. 1 in the City.  Anywhere but here it’s a pleasure to be a Thirst; but here!  Good Lord, it will send me off my head.  How would a bath go now, old chap?  By God, don’t you wish you were back in your canoe, drawn up among the rushes near Islip, and you just going to plunge into the cool waters of the Char?  Or think of that day you bathed in the deep still pool at the foot of the Tamarin Falls, with the water crashing down above you, into the deep shady chasm.  Even a dip in the sea at Mount Lavinia wouldn’t be bad now,—­or, better still, a dive into Como from a rowboat; you remember that hot summer we went to Como?  I’ll tell you another thing that wouldn’t go down badly either.  Do you remember a great bowl of strawberries and cream with a huge ice in it, that you had the day before you left school, after that hot bike ride to Leamington?  Not bad, was it?

CECIL (fiercely).  Shut up, you beast!  Oh, curse this idiotic war!  Why are we such fools?