Part 1 “We’re going through!”The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye.“We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for
a hurricane, if you ask me.”“I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,”said the Commander.“Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!”The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa- pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of

complicated dials.“Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted.“Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg.“Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander.“Full strength in No. 3 turret!”The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned.“The Old Man’ll get us through,”they said to one another.“The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!”. . . “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!”said Mrs. Mitty.“What are you driving so fast for?” “Hmm?”said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd.“You were up to fifty-five,”she said.“You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.”Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fadingin the remote, intimate airways 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 you over.”

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done.“Remember to get those overshoes while 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 all through that,”she said, getting out of the car.“You’re not a young man any longer.” He raced the engine a little.“Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again.“Pick it up, brother!”snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot. . . .“It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,”said the pretty nurse.“Yes?”said

Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly.“Who has the case?”“Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr.

Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard.“Hello, Mitty,” he said.“We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’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 read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands.“A brilliant performance, sir.”“Thank you,”said Walter Mitty.“Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington.