e instrument-board.
Except for that regular movement, he gave no sign of life. As for
Berry, sunk, papoose-like, in the chauffeur's cockpit in rear, I hoped
that his airman's cap would stand him in stead....

The light was good, and would serve us for half an hour. The car was
pulling like the mares of Diomedes. As we flung by the last of the
villas, I gave her her head....

Instantly the long straight road presented a bend, and I eased her up
with a frown. We took the corner at fifty, the car holding the road as
though this were banked for speed. As we flashed by the desolate
race-course and the ground on which Piers had alighted two hours
before, I lifted a grateful head. It was clear that what corners we
met could be counted out. With such a grip of the road and such
acceleration, the time which anything short of a hairpin bend would
cost us was almost negligible.

As if annoyed at my finding, the road for the next five miles ran
straight as a die. For over three of those miles the lady whose lap we
sat in was moving at eighty-four.

A hill appeared--a long, long hill, steep, straight, yellow--tearing
towards us.... We climbed with the rush of a lift--too fast for our
stomachs.

The road was improving now, but, as if to cancel this, a steep, winding
hill fell into a sudden valley. As we were dropping, I saw its
grey-brown fellow upon the opposite side, dragging his tedious way to
the height we had left.

We lost time badly here, for down on the flat of the dale a giant lorry
was turning, while a waggon was creeping by. For a quarter of a
precious minute the road was entirely blocked. Because of the coming
ascent the check hit us hard. In a word, it made a mountain out of a
molehill. What the car might have swallowed whole she had to
masticate. She ate her way up the rise, snorting with indignation....

A mile (or a minute, Sirs, whichever you please) was all the grace she
had to find her temper. Then the deuce of a hill swerved down to the
foot of another--long, blind, sinuous. The road was writhing like a
serpent. We used it as serpents should be used. Maybe it bruised our
heels: we bruised its head savagely....

We were on the level now, and the way was straight again. A dot ahead
was a waggon. I wondered which way it was going. I saw, and we passed
it by in the same single moment of time. That I may not be thought
inobservant, forty-five yards a second is a pace which embarrasses