Content Warning: The source text contains derogatory terms for Asian people and displays racist and imperialist attitudes toward non-European cultures. These attitudes are discussed in this section of the guide, along with the source text’s depiction of PTSD.

The narrator sits smoking cigars at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport with two English friends from school, Rutherford and Wyland. Rutherford is a novelist, and Wyland is an Embassy secretary. Their conversation is stilted, with the narrator preferring Rutherford over Wyland. A Royal Air Force pilot named Sanders comes to sit with them, and when Wyland steps away, he discusses an incident during a revolt at Baskul, in India, in which a man hijacked a plane with four passengers. Among the passengers were three men, one of whom was named Conway, and a woman who was a missionary. Rutherford knows Conway, and he expresses astonishment at the fact that the plane, once stolen, was never found. When Wyland returns, Sanders apologizes for revealing a story that should have been secret, and Wyland chastises him. Wyland, Rutherford, and the narrator all knew Conway from school, and they all think he is a remarkable man. Wyland pushes the conversation away from Conway and the Baskul incident, and the four men part ways.