'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?"