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 in no time .... Besides, I’m enjoying myself. . . . Three pounds eighteen and sixpence. Infernal swindle!"

I take it one of his more recent fines was rankling in Kysh’s brain; but he drove like the Archangel of the Twilight.

About the longitude of Cassocks, Hinchcliffe yawned. "Aren’t we ever goin’ to maroon our Robert? I’m hungry, too."

"The commodore wants his money back," I answered.

"If he drives like this habitual, there must be a tidyish little lump owin’ to him," said Pyecroft. "Well, I’m agreeable."

"I didn’t know it could be done. S’welp me, I didn’t," our guest murmured.

"But you will," said Kysh. And that was the first and last time he addressed the man.

We ran through Penfield Green, half stupefied with open air, drugged with the relentless boom of the Octopod, and extinct with famine.

"I used to shoot about here," said Kysh, a few miles farther on. "Open that gate, please," and he slowed as the sun touched the sky-line. At this point we left metalled roads and bucked vigorously amid ditches and under trees for twenty minutes.

"Only cross-country car on the market," he said, as we wheeled into a straw-yard where a lone bull bellowed defiance to our growlings. "Open that gate, please. I hope the cattle-bridge will stand up."

"I’ve took a few risks in my time," said Pyecroft as timbers cracked beneath us and we