Her hand ached and she looked down to see an ugly scar stretching across the ball of her thumb. It was already old and long since mishealed.

And how will your conscience answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and levity at the metropolitan Vanity Fair?

They are to be uncoffled, given tunics and stand in orderly rows until told otherwise.

The attack also afforded Helena to a front-seat view of literal air-to-air melee combat, as one Wildcat pilot of the Cactus Air Force, who was swooping in to help break up the attack, found himself out of machine-gun ammo; instead, he dropped his landing gear, positioned himself above the nearest bomber, and begun beating it to death, in midair, using his landing gear as clubs. After a bit of evasive action that the fighter easily kept up with, the repeated slamming broke something important, and the bomber spiralled down into the sea.