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"Get out o' my back-hair! That must have been the brake I touched off," Hinchcliffe muttered, and repaired his error tumultuously. We passed the cart as though we had been all Bruges belfry. Agg, from the port-office door, regarded us with a too pacific eye. I remembered later that the pretty postmistress looked on us pityingly. Hinchcliffe wiped the sweat from his brow and drew breath.
Therefore, three miles short of Linghurst, I was less surprised than any one, excepting always my engineer, when the engines set up a lunatic clucking, and, after two or three kicks, jammed. "Heaven forgive me all the harsh things I may have said about destroyers in my sinful time!" wailed Hinchcliffe, snapping back the throttle. "What's worryin' Ada now?"
Stack o' brushwood on the starboard beam, and no road," sang Pyecroft. "Cr-r-ri-key!" said Hinchcliffe, as the car on a wild cant to the left went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the pond. "If she only had two propellers, I believe she'd talk poetry. She can do everything else." "We're rather on our port wheels now," said Kysh; "but I don't think she'll capsize.
"An' you a family man, too," muttered Pyecroft, swinging himself into the right rear seat. "Sure to be a remarkably hectic day when we meet." We adjusted ourselves and, in the language of the immortal Navy doctor, paved our way towards Linghurst, distant by mile-post 11-3/4 miles. Mr. Hinchcliffe, every nerve and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally.
While most of us were getting comfortably settled in our deck chairs, someone noticed that Louis Glass, George Vranizan, C. W. Hinchcliffe, Carl Westerfeld, C. A. Thayer, C. H. James, William Symon, F. S. Ballinger, P. H. Lyon, S. L. Schwartz and Henry Mattlage had disappeared below.
Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed together. "Not as easy as it looks eh, Hinch?" "It is dead easy. I'm going to drive her to Instead Wick aren't I?" said the first-class engine-room artificer. I thought of his performances with No. 267 and nodded. After all, it was a small privilege to accord to pure genius. "But my engineer will stand by at first," I added.
Hinchcliffe returned, drawn as by ropes to my steam-car, round which he walked in narrowing circles. "What's her speed?" he demanded of the engineer. "Twenty-five," said that loyal man. "Easy to run?" "No; very difficult," was the emphatic answer. "That just shows that you ain't fit for your rating.
"If I was a burnin' peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin' tail, I'd need 'em all on this job!" said Hinch. "Don't talk! Steer! This ain't the North Atlantic," Pyecroft replied. "Blast my stokers! Why, the steam's dropped fifty pounds!" Hinchcliffe cried. "Fire's blown out," said the engineer. "Stop her!" "Does she do that often?" said Hinch, descending. "Sometimes." "Anytime?"
Once more the car returned to us; but as Pyecroft stooped to gather up the rug, Hinchcliffe jerked the lever testily, and with prawn-like speed she retired backwards into her own steam. "Apparently 'e don't," said Pyecroft. "What's he done now, Sir?" "Reversed her. I've done it myself." "But he's an engineer." For the third time the car manoeuvred up the hill.
Hinchcliffe rearranged these last to make some sort of causeway; I brought up the hurdles; and when Pyecroft and his subaltern had dropped a dozen hop-poles across the stream, laid them down over all. "Talk o' the Agricultur'l Hall!" he said, mopping his brow "'tisn't in it with us. The approach to the bridge must now be paved with hurdles, owin' to the squashy nature o' the country.
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