For the next two hours, shrapnel, "whizz-bangs," "Silent Susies," and other explosive wildfowl raged round the walls of Hush Hall.

In the early days Mac would come away from these preparations saying with dry pleasure: "Now, with luck, we may get a Xema Sabinii," or some such fearful wildfowl.

A stray wildfowl honked somewhere to seaward, and the surf broke limply and hollowly on the sand.