Far up the shaded road into secluded Bromlingleigh we saw the carrier"s cart at rest before the post-office.
"He"s bung in the fairway. How"m I to get past?" said Hinchcliffe.
"There"s no room. Here, Pye, come and relieve the wheel!"
"Nay, nay, Pauline. You"ve made your own bed. You"ve as good as left your happy home an" family cart to steal it. Now you lie on it."
"Ring your bell," I suggested.
"Glory!" said Pyecroft, falling forward into the nape of Hinchcliffe"s neck as the car stopped dead.
"Get out o" my back-hair! That must have been the brake I touched off,"
Hinchcliffe muttered, and repaired his error tumultuously.
We pa.s.sed the cart as though we had been all Bruges belfry. Agg, from the port-office door, regarded us with a too pacific eye. I remembered later that the pretty postmistress looked on us pityingly.
Hinchcliffe wiped the sweat from his brow and drew breath. It was the first vehicle that he had pa.s.sed, and I sympathised with him.
"You needn"t grip so hard," said my engineer. "She steers as easy as a bicycle."
"Ho! You suppose I ride bicycles up an" down my engine-room?" was the answer. "I"ve other things to think about. She"s a terror. She"s a whistlin" lunatic. I"d sooner run the old South-Easter at Simon"s Town than her!"
"One of the nice things they say about her," I interrupted, "is that no engineer is needed to run this machine."
"No. They"d need about seven."
""Common-sense only is needed,"" I quoted.
"Make a note of that, Hinch. Just common-sense," Pyecroft put in.
"And now," I said, "we"ll have to take in water. There isn"t more than a couple of inches of water in the tank."
"Where d"you get it from?"
"Oh!--cottages and such-like."
"Yes, but that being so, where does your much-advertised twenty-five miles an hour come in? Ain"t a dung-cart more to the point?"
"If you want to go anywhere, I suppose it would be," I replied.
"_I_ don"t want to go anywhere. I"m thinkin" of you who"ve got to live with her. She"ll burn her tubes if she loses her water?"
"She will."
"I"ve never scorched yet, and I not beginnin" now." He shut off steam firmly. "Out you get, Pye, an" shove her along by hand."
"Where to?"
"The nearest water-tank," was the reply. "And Suss.e.x is a dry county."
"She ought to have drag-ropes--little pipe-clayed ones," said Pyecroft.
We got out and pushed under the hot sun for half-a-mile till we came to a cottage, spa.r.s.ely inhabited by one child who wept.
"All out haymakin", o" course," said Pyecroft, thrusting his head into the parlour for an instant. "What"s the evolution now?"
"Skirmish till we find a well," I said.
"Hmm! But they wouldn"t "ave left that kid without a chaperon, so to say... I thought so! Where"s a stick?"
A bluish and silent beast of the true old sheep-dog breed glided from behind an outhouse and without words fell to work.
Pyecroft kept him at bay with a rake-handle while our party, in rallying- square, retired along the box-bordered brick-path to the car.
At the garden gate the dumb devil halted, looked back on the child, and sat down to scratch.
"That"s his three-mile limit, thank Heaven!" said Pyecroft. "Fall in, push-party, and proceed with land-transport o" pinnace. I"ll protect your flanks in case this sniffin" flea-bag is tempted beyond "is strength."
We pushed off in silence. The car weighed 1,200 lb., and even on ball-bearings was a powerful sudorific. From somewhere behind a hedge we heard a gross rustic laugh.
"Those are the beggars we lie awake for, patrollin" the high seas. There ain"t a port in China where we wouldn"t be better treated. Yes, a Boxer "ud be ashamed of it," said Pyecroft.
A cloud of fine dust boomed down the road.
"Some happy craft with a well-found engine-room! How different!" panted Hinchcliffe, bent over the starboard mudguard.
It was a claret-coloured petrol car, and it stopped courteously, as good cars will at sight of trouble.
"Water, only water," I answered in reply to offers of help.
"There"s a lodge at the end of these oak palings. They"ll give you all you want. Say I sent you. Gregory--Michael Gregory. Good-bye!"
"Ought to "ave been in the Service. Prob"ly is," was Pyecroft"s comment.
At that thrice-blessed lodge our water-tank was filled (I dare not quote Mr. Hinchcliffe"s remarks when he saw the collapsible rubber bucket with which we did it) and we re-embarked. It seemed that Sir Michael Gregory owned many acres, and that his park ran for miles.
"No objection to your going through it," said the lodge-keeper. "It"ll save you a goodish bit to Instead Wick."
But we needed petrol, which could be purchased at Pigginfold, a few miles farther up, and so we held to the main road, as our fate had decreed.
"We"ve come seven miles in fifty-four minutes, so far," said Hinchcliffe (he was driving with greater freedom and less responsibility), "and now we have to fill our bunkers. This is worse than the Channel Fleet."
At Pigginfold, after ten minutes, we refilled our petrol tank and lavishly oiled our engines. Mr. Hinchcliffe wished to discharge our engineer on the grounds that he (Mr. Hinchcliffe) was now entirely abreast of his work. To this I demurred, for I knew my car. She had, in the language of the road, held up for a day and a half, and by most bitter experience I suspected that her time was very near. Therefore, three miles short of Linghurst, I was less surprised than any one, excepting always my engineer, when the engines set up a lunatic clucking, and, after two or three kicks, jammed.
"Heaven forgive me all the harsh things I may have said about destroyers in my sinful time!" wailed Hinchcliffe, snapping back the throttle.
"What"s worryin" Ada now?"
"The forward eccentric-strap screw"s dropped off," said the engineer, investigating.
"That all? I thought it was a propeller-blade."