grass. Lupin pods spat and popped in the cooling air, and the sea breathed and thudded as the tide surged in, but Johnny's grandfather lay oblivious. Johnny grunted, alarmed at some galloping dream, and flopped on to his back. He snored resoundingly, with a magnificence of snorting and whistling, but his grandfather didn't hear, lying there sprawled and helpless on the bunk. ‘Aii-aue-e-e-e!’ ‘Ho, the pain!’ said Johnny's grandfather, shaking his head in serious memory. ‘I wouldn't want to go through that again.’ Johnny had snapped awake in heart-stopping alarm. His grandfather was screaming, threshing around in the bunk in agony, tearing at his right ear with both frantic fists. Johnny grabbed him, yelling, and tore those fists away, and peered, groping in the darkness. No good: he stumbled over to the cupboard with some vague memory of the lamp it might contain. Dishes shattered and pans crashed. Nothing. He groped to the doorway, stumbled to the shed out back, kicked open the door. An old shovel cracked down on his head, and the harness hanging on the wall seized him round the neck. But the lamp was there, hanging dusty above the scythe. Johnny cut himself and yelled with panicky fury, but tore down the lamp and stumbled back to the shack. The lamp was empty. Johnny's grandfather's screams had descended to hoarse groans, as he swayed half-demented in his bunk. More dishes crashed; the bottle of paraffin was at the back of the cupboard. Then the painful groping of getting the lamp fueled: but at long last it flared into dusky brilliance. Johnny gulped at the last of his tea. His fag had gone out; he struck a match, and then sat looking at the little flame in a meaningful silence. ‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘That was a bad night, that was.’ ‘But what was wrong, hey?’ Johnny fixed me with a serious eye. ‘You ‘I was suffering the pains of the damned,’ said Johnny's grandfather.