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"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin icebreaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braidedwhite cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can'tmake it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'mnot asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on thepower lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" Thepounding of the cylinders increased:ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared atthe ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted arow of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted."Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Fullstrength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength inNo. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in thehuge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each otherand grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to oneanother. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What areyou driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat besidehim, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, likea strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up tofifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go more thanforty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove on towardWaterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worststorm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimateairways of his mind. "You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty."It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look youover."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where hiswife went to have her hair done. "Remember to get those overshoeswhile I'm having my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes,"said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. "We've been allthrough that," she said, getting out of the car. "You're not ayoung man any longer." He raced the engine a little. "Why don't youwear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reachedin a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but aftershe had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on toa red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snappeda cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his glovesand lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for atime, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parkinglot.

. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan," said thepretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly."Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are twospecialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr.Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A door opened down along, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraughtand haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having the devil'sown time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personalfriend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wishyou'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: "Dr.Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've readyour book on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shakinghands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you," said WalterMitty. "Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty," grumbledRemington. "Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here fora tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge, complicatedmachine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes andwires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The newanesthetizer is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no onein the East who knows how to fix it!" "Quiet, man!" said Mitty, ina low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now goingpocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicatelya row of glistening dials. "Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped.Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out ofthe machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will hold forten minutes," he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse hurriedover and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale."Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If you would takeover, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure ofBenbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the twogreat specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a whitegown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurseshanded him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed onthe brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot attendant,looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He begancautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave hersit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got outof the car. "Hey, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handingthe man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car,backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along MainStreet; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to takehis chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them woundaround the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car andunwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mittyalways made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. Thenext time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling; theywon't grin at me then. I'll have my right arm in a sling andthey'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. Hekicked at the slush on the sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said tohimself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a boxunder his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thingwas his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice beforethey set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hatedthese weekly trips to town--he was always getting something wrong.Kleenex, he thought, Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste,toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? Hegave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's the what's-its-name?" she would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot thewhat's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting something about theWaterbury trial.

. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The DistrictAttorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure onthe witness stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter Mittytook the gun and examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers50.80," ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom.The Judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort offirearms, I believe?" said the District Attorney, insinuatingly."Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that thedefendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he worehis right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July."Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneyswere stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said evenly, "Icould have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with myleft hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman'sscream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-hairedgirl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney struck ather savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man haveit on the point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and thebuildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom andsurrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. "He said'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to her companion. "That man said 'Puppybiscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A.& P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up thestreet. "I want some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to theclerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in theworld thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the box,"said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen minutes'Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble dryingit; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to get tothe hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her asusual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window,and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor besideit. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into thechair. "Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?" WalterMitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruinedstreets.

. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,"said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousledhair. "Get him to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll flyalone." "But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "Ittakes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are poundinghell out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between here andSaulier." "Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty."I'm going over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for thesergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around thedugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood andsplinters flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing," saidCaptain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage is closing in," said thesergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with hisfaint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another brandy andtossed it off. "I never see a man could hold his brandy like you,sir," said the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain Mittystood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. "It'sforty kilometers through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mittyfinished one last brandy. "After all," he said softly, "whatisn't?" The pounding of the cannon increased; there was therat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came themenacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. WalterMitty walked to the door of the dugout humming "Aupres de MaBlonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said.. . .

Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking all over thishotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to hide in thisold chair? How did you expect me to find you?" "Things close in,"said Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you getthe what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's in that box?""Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't you have put them on in thestore?" 'I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur toyou that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going totake your temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintlyderisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks tothe parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Waithere for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was morethan a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain,rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of thedrugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heelstogether. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Waker Mittyscornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped itaway. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips,he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud anddisdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.