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When the inspiring grey preliminaries of the dawn began, Denry saw that at the back of the pantechnicon the waste of waters extended for at most a yard, and that it was easy, by climbing on to the roof, to jump therefrom to the wharf. He did so, and then fixed a plank so that Ruth could get ashore. Relieved of their weight the table floated out after them.
By and by, the carriage, that unwieldy "trifle from the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea.
It was a day such as Dublin placed away carefully into the pantechnicon of famous archives. The city of Dublin was not always clean, but in the bright, gorgeous sun her natural filth was no menace to the eye, no repulse to the senses. Above the Liffey, even at so early an hour, the heat shimmers like a silver mist.
The one thing clear certainly appeared to be that Denry, in endeavouring to prevent a runaway pantechnicon from destroying the town, had travelled with it into the canal. The romantic trip was accepted as perfectly characteristic of Denry.
The pantechnicon went through them as a sword will go through a ghost, and Denry was still alive. The remainder of the journey was brief and violent, owing partly to a number of bags of cement, and partly to the propinquity of the canal basin. The pantechnicon jumped into the canal like a mastodon, and drank.
Thick weather at sea is always exasperating, and to avoid the chance of colliding with something they could not possibly avoid at any greater speed, Langdon had been forced to ease to the leisurely speed of eight knots, and eight knots to a T.B.D., even a relic of the Rapier's age, is just about as irritating as being wedged in a narrow lane in a 40-horse power Daimler behind a horse pantechnicon.
Arthur cried laughingly, as he dragged at the unwieldy bulk. "If you are afraid of this old bark, I don't know when you would feel safe. It is like going to sea in a pantechnicon!" "And after a voyage to India, too! How funny! I am not a bit afraid, and I have never been out of England in my life.
Denry, clinging to the woodwork, was submerged for a moment, but, by standing on the narrow platform from which sprouted the splintered ends of the shafts, he could get his waist clear of the water. He was not a swimmer. All was still and dark, save for the faint stream of starlight on the broad bosom of the canal basin. The pantechnicon had encountered nobody whatever en route.
Of its strange escapade Denry had been the sole witness. "Well, I'm dashed!" he murmured aloud. And a voice replied from the belly of the pantechnicon: "Who is there?" All Denry's body shook. "It's me!" said he. "Not Mr Machin?" said the voice. "Yes," said he. "I jumped on as it came down the street and here we are!" "Oh!" cried the voice. "I do wish you could get round to me." Ruth Earp's voice.
In such manner came Helen Rathbone to be the mistress of Wilbraham Hall. Before the spacious crimson façade of Wilbraham Hall upon an autumn day stood Mr. Crump's pantechnicon. That is to say, it was a pantechnicon only by courtesy Mr. Crump's courtesy. In strict adherence to truth it was just a common furniture-removing van, dragged over the earth's surface by two horses.
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