the final test, from which he might or might not come alive. ••••• And how many of those others—his judges—lay quiet and still in unmarked graves?…
In the dim light he looked critically at his hand. It was perfectly steady; shamefacedly—unseen—he felt his pulse, it was normal: he was not afraid, that he knew—and yet, somehow, in the pit of his stomach there was a curious sort of feeling. He recalled the first time he had batted at school before a large crowd: he recalled the time when, lying on an operating table, he had seen the doctor fiddling with his instruments: he recalled those horrible ancient newspapers in the waiting-room at his dentist’s: and grimly he realised that the feeling was much the same. It was fear of the unknown, he told himself savagely; moreover, he was right. Yet he envied fiercely, furiously, the man sleeping in the opposite corner who came to war with a walking-stick.… But the man who came to war with a walking-stick, who slept so easily in his corner, who swore because he could not get a motor-car,
