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“On the face of it,” said Colonel Shore, “it is crazy. That’s what ought to make it easy to solve. If it was ordinary, there might be half a dozen solutions, and you could never be sure that you’d get hold of the right one. With a crazy problem like this, if you can find any solution at all, it must be the right one.”
He had a deep respect for the American’s intellect—a respect based subconsciously on the fact that Colonel Shore looked like Gary Cooper, who was the only American film star of whom the Commander approved.
What are you doing in this play, by the way?” “I’m Barrett.” “Who’s he?” “A chap who bullied his children.” “Good idea, really,” said the McInstalker. “I was always bullied when I was a child. Look at me now.”
“No, no,” said Rolf-Callender. “You mustn’t look at me like that, Peter, really you mustn’t. The book says ‘with restrained spiritual passion’. ‘Spiritual’, please. You’re looking at me like a greedy little parlour-maid with her first date.”
Colonel Baird paused. He felt that the occasion demanded something. “I’m glad they didn’t shoot you,” he said.
“What sort of rake-off have I got from my harrowing ordeal? When I was coming back to the hut this morning I met Dopey Gibbon. He had almost got past me when he stopped, came back, and said, ‘Weren’t you going to be shot this morning, or something?’
The speaker was a submariner, a naval lieutenant who contrived (it is a secret known only to the Navy) to combine a look of youthful innocence with a huge red beard.
“Put them in the same cage in the Zoo,” said the submariner, “and there wouldn’t have been a cloven hoof’s difference between them.”
“Good show, Angus,” said Goyles. “You looked as if you really enjoyed bullying all those children.” “It answers a deep-felt want in my nature,” agreed Captain Abercrowther.
He had appreciated that there might be some difference in its apparent duration—a minute in the hands of the Spanish Inquisition might be longer than an hour in the arms of a lover—but he had never before realized that time could actually stop—that the sun and the moon could stand still and the chronology of the human race be suspended.
They had been further surprised to be woken, in the morning, by a black woman, who told them that she came from Georgia and would be a mother to all of them. She had darned Tony’s socks, and they had spent the day sitting about the monastery and listening to an organ recital by an accomplished young monk from Eritrea.
