ust not be too anxious. We
were going to get out of this all right, and before long.

"Tell him to go back. I _shall_ go back!" wailed Lady Turnour.

"Dearest, we can't!" her husband assured her.

"Then tell him to stop and let me get out and walk. This is too awful.
He wants to kill us."

"_Can_ you stop and let us get out?" pleaded Sir Samuel.

"To stop here would be the most dangerous thing we could do," was the
answer.

"You hear, Emmie, my darling."

"I hear. Impudence to dictate to you! Whatever _you_ are willing to do,
_I_ won't be bearded."

One would have thought she was an oyster. But she was quite right in not
wishing to add a beard to her charms, as already a moustache was like
those coming events that cast a well-defined shadow before. For an
instant I half thought that Mr. Dane would try and stop, her tone was so
furious, but he drove on as steadily as if he had not a passenger more
fit for Bedlam than for a motor-car.

Seeing that Dane stuck like grim death to his determination and his
steering-wheel, Sir Samuel shut the window and devoted himself to
calming his wife who, I imagine, threatened to tear open the door and
jump out. The important thing was that he kept her from doing it,
perhaps by bribes of gold and precious stones, and the Aigle moved on,
writhing like a wounded snake as she obeyed the hand on the wheel. If
the slightest thing should go wrong in the steering-gear, as we read of
in other motor-cars each time we picked up a newspaper--but other cars
were not in charge of Mr. Jack Dane. I felt sure, somehow, that nothing
would ever go wrong with a steering-gear of whose destiny he was master.

Not a word did he speak to me, yet I felt that my silence of tongue and
stillness of body was approved of by him. He had said that we would be
"out of this before long," so I believed we would; but suddenly my eyes
told me that something worse than we had won through was in store for us
ahead.

CHAPTER XXI

All this time we'd been struggling up hill, but abruptly we came to the
top of the ascent, and had to go sliding down, along the same shelf,
which now seemed narrower than before. Looking ahead, it appeared to
have been bitten off round the edge here and there, just at the stiffest
zigs and zags of the nightmare road. And far down the mountain the way
went winding under our eyes, like the loops of a lasso; short, jerky
loops, as we came to each new turn, to which the length of o