Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/242

 and perhaps unconscious for a minute through falling on his head. I wondered if he knew about Aunt Mary. But it was too delicate a subject to raise. Anyway, she hadn't a bruise. And wasn't it extraordinary about Jimmy? The car had "fallen on its feet," so to speak, and he had hung on to the steering-post so hard that not only had he kept his seat, but he had wrenched the steering-gear. Brown discovered this in peering into the works by the light of one of our own oil-lamps, relit from the carter's lantern. If the Napier hadn't been a magnificent car it would have been frightfully damaged, although, finding itself compelled to take a twelve-foot jump off the road, it had cleverly chosen comparatively smooth, meadow-like ground to descend upon. Not even a tyre was punctured; no harm whatever appeared to have been done except that, as I said, owing to Jimmy's savage contortions in search of safety, the steering-gear was wrenched.

There's a thing called a worm in steering-gear, it seems, also a rod; and new ones would have to be fitted in ours before we could go on again. When I heard this I felt rather qualmish, for my wrist was aching a good deal, and had begun to swell. Brown and the carter were talking together, and according to them the best thing seemed to be to carry luggage and rugs to the nearest village, Le Beausset, and try to get accommodation there for the night. Brown would go on to Toulon, he said, and try to get new parts for the car, with which he'd come back early in the morning.

Still I didn't say anything about my wrist. Aunt