Expert Aid

A coastal flying station in South Africa boasted a meteorological officer whose performance bordered on the uncanny. He could call a whole weekend's weather changes from Friday morning to Sunday evening. He could not seem to go wrong.

Only when he departed for new duty in the Middle East did he reveal his secret. He had been getting his dope from his batman, a coal black Xosa named Filemon. Filemon had been a tribal weather prophet of renown. He had joined the army only after an embarrassment involving a long-range weather forecast, a perversely unexpected dry spell, and his tribe's 1940 corn crop.

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