Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (500 page)

“I wonder!” said Pyecroft, musing. “But, after all, it’s your steamin’ gadgets he’s usin’ for his libretto, as you might put it. He said to me after breakfast only this mornin’ ‘ow he thanked his Maker, on all fours, that he wouldn’t see nor smell nor thumb a runnin’ bulgine till the nineteenth prox. Now look at him Only look at ‘im!”

We could see, down the long slope of the road, my driver surrendering his seat to Hinchcliffe, while the car flickered generously from hedge to hedge.

“What happens if he upsets?”

“The petrol will light up and the boiler may blow up.”

“How rambunkshus! And” — Pyecroft blew a slow cloud — ”Agg’s about three hoops up this mornin’, too.”

“What’s that to do with us? He’s gone down the road,” I retorted.

“Ye — es, but we’ll overtake him. He’s a vindictive carrier. He and Hinch ‘ad words about pig-breeding this morning. O’ course, Hinch don’t know the elements o’ that evolution; but he fell back on ‘is naval rank an’ office, an’ Agg grew peevish. I wasn’t sorry to get out of the cart … Have you ever considered how, when you an’ I meet, so to say, there’s nearly always a remarkable hectic day ahead of us! Hullo! Behold the beef-boat returnin’!”

He rose as the car climbed up the slope, and shouted: “In bow! Way ‘nuff!”

“You be quiet!” cried Hinchcliffe, and drew up opposite the rug, his dark face shining with joy. “She’s the Poetry o’ Motion! She’s the Angel’s Dream. She’s —  —  — ” He shut off steam, and the slope being against her, the car slid soberly downhill again.

“What’s this? I’ve got the brake on!” he yelled.

“It doesn’t hold backwards,” I said. “Put her on the mid-link.”

“That’s a nasty one for the chief engineer o’ the
Djinn
, 31-knot,
T.B.D.,” said Pyecroft. “
Do
you know what the mid-link is, Hinch?”

Once more the car returned to us; but as Pyecroft stooped to gather up the rug, Hinchcliffe jerked the lever testily, and with prawn-like speed she retired backwards into her own steam.

“Apparently ‘e don’t,” said Pyecroft. “What’s he done now, Sir?”

“Reversed her. I’ve done it myself.”

“But he’s an engineer.”

For the third time the car manoeuvred up the hill.

“I’ll teach you to come alongside properly, if I keep you ‘tiffies out all night!” shouted Pyecroft. It was evidently a quotation. Hinchcliffe’s face grew livid, and, his hand ever so slightly working on the throttle, the car buzzed twenty yards uphill.

“That’s enough. We’ll take your word for it. The mountain will go to
Ma’ommed. Stand
fast
!”

Pyecroft and I and the rug marched up where she and Hinchcliffe fumed together.

“Not as easy as it looks — eh, Hinch?”

“It is dead easy. I’m going to drive her to Instead Wick — aren’t I?” said the first-class engine-room artificer. I thought of his performances with No. 267 and nodded. After all, it was a small privilege to accord to pure genius.

“But my engineer will stand by — at first,” I added.

“An’ you a family man, too,” muttered Pyecroft, swinging himself into the right rear seat. “Sure to be a remarkably hectic day when we meet.”

We adjusted ourselves and, in the language of the immortal Navy doctor, paved our way towards Linghurst, distant by mile-post 11-3/4 miles.

Mr. Hinchcliffe, every nerve and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. I recalled the time when I, too, had enjoyed the rack on which he voluntarily extended himself.

And the County of Sussex slid by in slow time.

“How cautious is the ‘tiffy-bird!” said Pyecroft.

“Even in a destroyer,” Hinch snapped over his shoulder, “you ain’t expected to con and drive simultaneous. Don’t address any remarks to
me!
”

“Pump!” said the engineer. “Your water’s droppin’.”

“
I
know that. Where the Heavens is that blighted by-pass?”

He beat his right or throttle hand madly on the side of the car till he found the bent rod that more or less controls the pump, and, neglecting all else, twisted it furiously.

My engineer grabbed the steering-bar just in time to save us lurching into a ditch.

“If I was a burnin’ peacock, with two hundred bloodshot eyes in my shinin’ tail, I’d need ‘em all on this job!” said Hinch.

“Don’t talk! Steer! This ain’t the North Atlantic,” Pyecroft replied.

“Blast my stokers! Why, the steam’s dropped fifty pounds!” Hinchcliffe cried.

“Fire’s blown out,” said the engineer. “Stop her!”

“Does she do that often?” said Hinch, descending.

“Sometimes.”

“Anytime?”

“Any time a cross-wind catches her.”

The engineer produced a match and stooped.

That car (now, thank Heaven, no more than an evil memory) never lit twice in the same fashion. This time she back-fired superbly, and Pyecroft went out over the right rear wheel in a column of rich yellow flame.

“I’ve seen a mine explode at Bantry — once — prematoor,” he volunteered.

“That’s all right,” said Hinchcliffe, brushing down his singed beard with a singed forefinger. (He had been watching too closely.) “Has she any more little surprises up her dainty sleeve?”

“She hasn’t begun yet,” said my engineer, with a scornful cough. “Some one ‘as opened the petrol-supply-valve too wide.”

“Change places with me, Pyecroft,” I commanded, for I remembered that the petrol-supply, the steam-lock, and the forced draught were all controlled from the right rear seat.

“Me? Why? There’s a whole switchboard full o’ nickel-plated muckin’s which
I haven’t begun to play with yet. The starboard side’s crawlin’ with ‘em.”

“Change, or I’ll kill you!” said Hinchcliffe, and he looked like it.

“That’s the ‘tiffy all over. When anything goes wrong, blame it on the lower deck. Navigate by your automatic self, then!
I
won’t help you any more.”

We navigated for a mile in dead silence.

“Talkin’ o’ wakes —  — ” said Pyecroft suddenly.

“We weren’t,” Hinchcliffe grunted.

“There’s some wakes would break a snake’s back; but this of yours, so to speak, would fair turn a tapeworm giddy. That’s all I wish to observe, Hinch. … Cart at anchor on the port-bow. It’s Agg!”

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 passed 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 passed, 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 Sussex 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, sparsely 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.”

“We must go an’ look for it. There isn’t another.”