My Uncle Oswald

'What volume of fluid in each dose?' I asked.

'Very small. Just half a cc.'

'Is that all you inject into the cow, just half a cc of fluid?'

'That's all. But don't forget there's twenty million living spermatozoa in that half cc.'

'Ah, yes.'

'I put these little doses separately into small rubber tubes,' he said. 'I call them straws. I seal both ends, then I freeze. Just think of it, Cornelius! Two hundred and fifty highly potent straws of spermatozoa from a single ejaculation!'

'I am thinking about it,' I said. 'It's a bloody miracle.'

'And I can store them for as long as I like, deep frozen. All I have to do when a cow starts bulling is take out one straw from the liquid nitrogen flask, thaw it, which doesn't take a minute, transfer the contents to a syringe and shoot it into the cow.'

The bottle of port was three-quarters empty now and A. R. Woresley was getting a bit tipsy. I refilled his glass again.

'What about this prize bull you were talking about?' I said.

'I'm coming to that, my boy. That's the lovely part of the whole thing. That's the dividend.'

'Tell me.'

'Of course I'll tell you. So I said to my brother... this was three years ago, right in the middle of the war... my brother was exempt from the army, you see, because he was a farmer... so I said to Ernest, "Ernest," I said, "if you had the choice of any bull in England to service your entire herd, which one would you choose?"

' "I don't know about in England," Ernest said, "but the finest bull in these parts is Champion Glory of Friesland, owned by Lord Somerton. He's a pure-bred Friesian, and those Friesians are the best milk producers in the world. My God, Arthur," he says, "you should see that bull! He's a giant! He cost ten thousand pounds and every calf he gets turns out to be a tremendous milker!"

' "Where is this bull kept?" I asked my brother.

' "On Lord Somerton's estate. That's over in Birdbrook."

' "Birdbrook? That's quite close, isn't it?"

' "Three miles away," my brother said. "They've got around two hundred pedigree Friesian dairy cattle and the bull runs with th

e herd. He's beautiful, Arthur, he really is."

' "Right," I said. "In the next twelve months, eighty per cent of your cows are going to have calves by that bull. Would you like that?"

' "Like it!" my brother said. "It would double my milk-yield." Could I trouble you, my dear Cornelius for one last glass of your excellent port?'

I gave him what there was. I even gave him the lees in the bottom of the bottle. 'Tell me what you did,' I said.

'We waited until one of my brother's cows was bulling good and proper. Then, in the dead of night... this took courage, Cornelius, it took a lot of courage...'

'I'm sure it did.'

'In the dead of night, Ernest put a halter on the cow and he led her along the country lanes to Lord Somerton's place three miles away.'

'Didn't you go with them?'

'I went beside them on a bicycle.'

'Why the bicycle?'

'You'll see in a moment. It was the month of May, nice and warm, and the time was around one in the morning. There was a bit of a moon shining which made it more dangerous, but we had to have some light to do what we were going to do. The journey took us an hour.

' "There you are," my brother said. "Over there. Can you see them?"