“For Pete’s sake, tune that fiddle!” Jack exploded.

“Tune it yourself!” Ted held out the violin. “How are you going to do it without a piano?”

Without troubling to reply, Jack accepted the challenge. Tucking the fiddle under his chin, he began strumming its strings.

“No.... Now!” He exclaimed once. Then, “There, that’s better!” He hummed a tune, tested a string, hummed again; then, after drawing the bow across the strings, exclaimed softly:

“Not bad! Not bad! Really quite a fiddle!”

“Little you know about that!” someone laughed. “You’re just a scout pilot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jack laughed. Then, after one more testing of the strings—seeming to forget his surroundings, the racing carrier, the black sea, the murmuring men—he began to play the “Londonderry Air.”

At once the group became silent. Even the great ship’s motors seemed to throb in a strange, new way as the plaintive strain drifted out into the night.

Jack played it through to the end, while many a boy far from home seemed to hear the voice of a woman singing the sweet and melancholy words of “Danny Boy.” Finishing, he purposely made a harsh discord, then gave the violin back.

“Bravo! Bravo!” came in a chorus. “More! More!”

“Here.” Ted held out the violin. “It’s yours, for keeps. If you can make it do that, it belongs to you.”

“What? You don’t mean that!” Jack stared in astonishment.

“I certainly do.” Ted spoke soberly. “Dad paid good money for that violin. It was wasted as far as I’m concerned. But you can really play!”

Yes, Jack could play. From his eighth birthday on, he had known but one ambition—to become a really fine violinist. Then had come the war, and—but why think of that? The war was here. He was a scout pilot.

For a moment he stood silently thinking. Then he said:

“Tell you what.” His voice was low and full of emotion. “You wanted my radio. I’ll swap you.”

“It’s a go,” Ted agreed.

Then, fearing that his first tune had dug too deep into the souls of his comrades, Jack struck out with the old “Virginia Reel.”

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