"
"I've took a few risks in my time," said Pyecroft as timbers cracked
beneath us and we entered between thickets, "but I'm a babe to this man,
Hinch."
"Don't talk to me. Watch _him!_ It's a liberal education, as Shakespeare
says. Fallen tree on the port bow, Sir."
"Right! That's my mark. Sit tight!"
She flung up her tail like a sounding whale and buried us in a fifteen-
foot deep bridle-path buttressed with the exposed roots of enormous
beeches. The wheels leaped from root to rounded boulder, and it was very
dark in the shadow of the foliage.
"There ought to be a hammer-pond somewhere about here." Kysh was letting
her down this chute in brakeful spasms.
"Water dead ahead, Sir. Stack o' brushwood on the starboard beam, and--no
road," sang Pyecroft.
"Cr-r-ri-key!" said Hinchcliffe, as the car on a wild cant to the left
went astern, screwing herself round the angle of a track that overhung the
pond. "If she only had two propellers, I believe she'd talk poetry. She
can do everything else."
"We're rather on our port wheels now," said Kysh; "but I don't think
she'll capsize. This road isn't used much by motors."
"You don't say so," said Pyecroft. "What a pity!"
She bored through a mass of crackling brushwood, and emerged into an
upward sloping fern-glade fenced with woods so virgin, so untouched, that
William Rufus might have ridden off as we entered. We climbed out of the
violet-purple shadows towards the upland where the last of the day
lingered.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206