nd times a second, but that caused me no
discomfort at all. I looked out of the window. An immovable cyclist, head
down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched to
overtake a galloping _char-a-banc_ that did not stir. I gaped in
amazement at this incredible spectacle. "Gibberne," I cried, "how long
will this confounded stuff last?"

"Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bed and slept
it off. I tell you, I was frightened. It must have lasted some minutes, I
think--it seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows down rather
suddenly, I believe."

I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened--I suppose because
there were two of us. "Why shouldn't we go out?" I asked.

"Why not?"

"They'll see us."

"Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times faster
than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Come along! Which
way shall we go? Window, or door?"

And out by the window we went.

Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, or
imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid I
made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the New
Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out by his gate
into the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque
passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses
of this _char-a-banc,_ the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of
the conductor--who was just beginning to yawn--were perceptibly in motion,
but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite
noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat. And
as parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a
conductor, and eleven people! The effect as we walked about the thing
began by being madly queer and ended by being--disagreeable. There they
were, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozen in careless
attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girl and a man smiled at one another,
a leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a woman in a floppy
capelline rested her arm on the rail and stared at Gibberne's house with
the unwinking stare of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure
of wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers
towards his loosened hat. We stared at them, we laughed at them, we made
faces at them, and then a sort