Bright Ideas

The Clipper of the Road

I

“How long will you be, Bob?”

“Can’t say: perhaps twenty minutes. You needn’t shout.”

“Jolly sensitive, ain’t you? What about my tender spots? After I’ve taken the trouble to write to your Aunt Caroline for your address, and got it, with yards and yards of advice to a young man, and then sacrificed a day of my leave to hunt you up, you won’t spare a jiff to talk to a fellow, and when I ask you a civil question, tell me not to shout, with the wind roaring like a barrage, and that wretched machine squeaking like——”

“Oh, come now, Tom, that’s not fair!” said Templeton. “I told you I must finish grinding these valves, then I’m free. And as for talking, I can hear you quite well; that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

“Been cultivating repartee with your C.O., I suppose,” remarked Eves. “Or else your naturally amiable disposition has broken down under the tender mercies of the Boche. Aunt Caroline warned me, I admit: said you had undergone great mental strain, underlined, and were feverishly anxious to repair your wasted life, underlined twice. What did the Boche do to you, Bobby, old man?”

“Tell you by and by: must finish this job.”

Eves sighed with resignation, and looked round for a seat. There was nothing available except a bench along the wall, littered with tools and odds and ends of machinery. Being also plentifully besmeared with black grease, it looked far from inviting, especially as Eves was wearing a new pair of slacks; but he cleared a space large enough to afford sitting room, and taking the outer sheets of a newspaper that lay handy, spread them on the board, seated himself thereon, and opened the inner sheet to kill time until Templeton should have finished his job.

Tom Eves, whose cap bore the badge of a certain regiment of Light Infantry, was in the final stage of convalescence from wounds received in action before Amiens. While in hospital he had learnt that Templeton, taken a prisoner in the early days of the Germans’ spring offensive, was among the first batch of officers repatriated under the terms of the armistice, and on applying to Miss Templeton for her nephew’s address, was astonished and amused to hear that he was hard at work in a little Dorset town within easy reach.

“Just like old Bob!” he said to himself. “Two months’ leave! And instead of playing the giddy goat, as any sensible fellow would do in his place, he feels he must make up for lost time and swot away at his old inventions. With a good balance at Cox’s, too. Aunt Caroline says she quite approves of his spending his money in preparation for his career—just the sort of thing she would say! Well, I’ll look him up, the old juggins, first leave I have!”

Templeton, in fact, taking his usual serious view of things in general and his inventions in particular, had been unable to reconcile himself to the prospect of two months’ idleness, after having kicked his heels for seven months in a prisoners’ camp, months during which his brain had teemed with “notions.” There was the two-way motor; the turbine motor; an automatic fire extinguisher; a sound increaser; a combined tin-opener and fountain pen, with corkscrew attachment; a road yacht; a push and pull door-handle. Aunt Caroline was so much impressed with the potential public utility of the bright ideas he expounded to her, that she placed £25 to his credit with Cox’s, and warmly commended him when he told her that he had found a field for his experiments in the little town of Pudlington. “A delightful spot!” she said, in her emphatic way. “A quaint old town, quite charming! And such invigorating air!” The manager of the British Motor Garage, just outside the town aforesaid, had agreed to give Templeton facilities for experimenting in exchange for his services—an arrangement that suited with his own and his aunt’s ideas of economy. Wilkins, the manager, was short-handed: indeed Templeton found himself more often than not in sole charge of the garage, for Wilkins was frequently absent, driving his only serviceable car for the officers of the camp a few miles away. Thus, when Eves made his appearance on this bright, windy December morning, he found his old friend, encased in the blue overalls of a mechanic, alone in the repairing shop, and engrossed in the job he had in hand.

For a few minutes Eves read the newspaper, without addressing any further remark to Templeton.

“I say, Bob!” he exclaimed at last, “here’s a chance for you.... All right—I won’t shout, but listen! ‘G.R.—Notice. Tenders for the purchase of waste from the Upper Edgecombe Camp should reach the Officer Commanding not later than noon on Thursday, December 12.’ Fortunes have been made out of waste. Perhaps you have tendered already: I see the paper’s nearly a week old.”

“I haven’t,” replied Templeton, curtly.

“Well, you’re not a rag and bone merchant, it’s true, but——”

“Considering that to-day’s the 12th, and it’s just on eleven now, it’s too late to tender, even if I wanted to.”

“Which you don’t! My bright ideas are always nipped in the bud. I say, Bob, was there anything in that story we heard in our mess at Corbie—that idea of yours, you know?”

“Which one?” asked Templeton, pausing for a moment in his task. He was always interested in ideas.

“Well, they said you were showing off one of your inventions to a brass hat—some sort of a door-handle, I think it was—and he got fixed up in a dug-out, and you couldn’t release him for three hours or so, and he got no lunch. Everybody said it was a splendid rag.”

“Idiots!”

“But wasn’t it true? The story ran through the front line trenches for thirty miles or so, and bucked the men up no end.”

“It wasn’t a rag at all. The fact is, the staff-major was too impatient. He wouldn’t wait till I’d finished explaining the idea, and the result was what you might have expected. It was his own fault—the idea’s all right.”

“What about your gas machine, then?”

“Well, what about it?” The inventor was roused: he stood facing Eves, with the air of a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way.

“The story that came to us was that you nearly caused a vacancy in the command of your battalion. Everybody said you were taking a short cut to getting your second pip.”

“Asses!” growled Templeton. “The explanation simply is that a screw was a trifle loose——”

“Now nobody said that, Bob, I assure you. Everybody said you were an awfully clever chap, only——”

“I tell you a screw was a bit loose, owing to the lack of suitable appliances, and the gas came out a second or two before it ought. And the C.O. needn’t have put his nose quite so close to the machine: I didn’t ask him to!”

“I suppose the adjutant was too inquisitive, then. Not that time; I mean when you were trying that self-adjusting bomb of yours. The Brigade Bombing Officer was full of it, and the mess were quite jealous, because we never had such rags on our sector.”

“Rags!” snorted Templeton in disgust. “I hate the word! You know perfectly well that I never rag. That self-adjusting bomb was a very serious matter.”

“Quite so. It’s only lucky it wasn’t more serious, isn’t it? We were told it cost your adjutant his left eyebrow and half a promising moustache.”

“Grossly exaggerated!” Templeton exclaimed.

“As Mark Twain said when he read the report of his own death! But what’s this, Bob?”

A long green motor-car was drawing up slowly and noisily in front of the garage, emitting a cloud of smoke. From the seat beside the chauffeur sprang a large man, wearing a heavily furred coat. He came round the car and called out, before he reached the open door of the repairing shop:

“Here, I say there! Can you do anythink for this car? My fool of a shover can’t find out what’s wrong, and we’ll crock up altogether if we go on like this. The engine’s knocking like anythink.”

By this time he had reached the doorway, and he stood there facing Templeton, after shooting one brief glance at Eves on the bench. Templeton, looking a little more solemn even than usual—or perhaps his expression was partly due to the black smears on his face—had not time to reply before Eves put in a word.

“Can yer do anythink for the gentleman?” he said.

“P’raps you’ve got another car handy?” said the stranger.

“No, there’s none in just now,” replied Templeton.

“Can’t you find one? Look here, young feller, I’ll make it worth yer while. I’ve got to call on the mayor and be at the camp inside of an hour. What yer say?”

“There’s not another car in the place. They’re all at the camp.”

“Well, then, you got to do somethink, and look alive!”

“Don’t keep the gentleman waiting!” said Eves, already enjoying himself. The turn things had taken seemed to carry prospects of what he called a “splendid rag.”

Templeton asked the chauffeur to step out, and taking his place, started the car, listening intently.

“There! Didn’t I tell yer?” said the owner, trotting alongside. “What’s wrong, eh?”

Templeton pulled up within a few yards, and backed.

“Oil,” he said, laconically. “Your big ends are going.”

“Big ends! What the jooce! Here, you Thomson, why didn’t you give the engine no oil?”

“‘Cos there warn’t none,” said the chauffeur, sulkily. “I told yer——”

“None of yer lip, now! Well, if it’s only oil—Here, mister, oil up, and look sharp about it! None of yer country dawdling: get a move on!”

Templeton looked over the side of the car, and said quietly, in his mild considered way:

“I should just like to remark that unless you can moderate your impatience, or curb your somewhat insolent expression of it, you may take yourself and your car elsewhere.”

“Yes,” cut in Eves, who had come out into the road. “If I were you, young feller, I’d jolly well chuck him into the horse-pond.”

The stranger looked from one to the other, his astonishment at Templeton’s address yielding to wrath.

“Who are you a-talking to?” he cried, making an aggressive move towards Eves.

“Not to you, my dear sir, not to you. I was merely telling this young feller what I should do if I were he, and you may thank your lucky stars I’m not.”

The man eyed the speaker truculently, as if meditating chastisement; but Eves, in spite of the blue band on his arm, looked so well knit, so vigorous, that valour subsided into discretion. Muttering something about “young pups in khaki,” the stranger turned towards the car, saw that Templeton had begun lubricating, and strolled across the yard towards a strange vehicle standing outside the garage.

“Here, Thomson, come and look at this,” he called.

For a few minutes the two men walked round the vehicle, discussing its appearance, laughing as one pointed out this or that feature to the other.

“It ain’t a car,” said the chauffeur.

“More like a boat,” said his employer. “This here’s a mast, ain’t it? P’raps it’s one of them hydroplanes.”

“They’re the same as airyplanes without the wheels. My idea it’s an agricultural implement: now-a-days they’ve all sorts of rum contraptions in country parts.”

They examined the vehicle, perfunctorily and without knowledge, until Templeton called out that the oiling was finished.

“Quite time too,” said the stranger, looking at his watch. “She’ll go all right?” he asked, as he rejoined Templeton in the road.

“Naturally I can’t give any guarantee,” replied Templeton, “but in all probability the engine will last out a few hours—until you have time to give it a thorough overhauling. If I may make a suggestion, let it cool down and run slowly, or the big ends will go altogether.”

“H’m! S’pose you know! How much?”

“Oh! say half-a-crown.”

“Here y’are. Get in, Thomson.” He shoved the chauffeur into the car. “Straight up!” he cried.

The car rattled away, still smoking, but less vigorously than before.

“Charming man!” said Eves, as the two returned to the shop. “Come across many like him, Bobby?”

“Oh! one meets all sorts. But I really think, Tom, I should be in danger of losing my temper if everybody who stopped here for repairs were quite so—so——”

“Exactly. Well, old sport, do hurry up with those valves. I had an early breakfast, and no squish—simply rotten, breakfast without squish. So hurry up, and we’ll go and swop some coupons.”

II

Templeton placidly resumed his job; Eves remounted the bench and again took up the newspaper. After a minute or two he exclaimed:

“I say, what do you think of this? ‘Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes’——”

“Who?”

“Alderman Noakes. Recalls sweet memories, eh, old sport? That summer idyll in our early youth—law! what ages ago it seems! ‘But ah! how it was sweet!’ That’s Browning, old man; not my own, I assure you. I seem to see, down the dim vista of departed years, the figure of our Noakes, smothered in half-consumed carbon, otherwise soot; and again the same Noakes, sprawling in a purling stream; and yet again the same Noakes, affectionately embracing his mother earth—various phases of Noakes concurrent with the flow of ideas in the cerebellum of——”

“Oh, dry up, Tom! You really are an awful ass sometimes.”

“Who are you a-talking to, young feller? I was just pointing out that the name Noakes, on the principle of the association of ideas—but let’s see what it says. ‘Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes, accompanied by the bailiff and reeves, will on December 21, for the four hundred and fifty-second time in the history of this ancient borough, perform the quaint ceremony of anointing the British Stone.’ The worthy mayor must be a hoary old Methuselah if he’s performed the ceremony four hundred and fifty-one times: he might be the great-grandfather ten times removed of that old rascal we knew. And if he’s even so distantly related as that, he’s probably a rascal too, and deserves to be kept waiting.”

“Waiting? What for?”

“Why, for that model of urbanity and fur collar who wanted you to do somethink to this ’ere car and look alive, young feller. He said he was going to call on the mayor, you remember.”

“He’s part of the show, perhaps. I wonder what that ceremony is. What a ramshackle old car that was! But all existing cars will be scrapped when I get my two-way motor going.”

“That’s the latest, is it?”

“Yes: I’ve great hopes of it. I’ve partly drawn up the specification—I’m going to take out a patent—but I can’t finish it until I get a nozzle that’s being specially manufactured to my order.”

“Rum thing, Bob, that most of your thingummy-bobs seldom do get finished: what? But we’ve had some splendid rags out of them all the same.”

“Now that’s not fair,” cried Templeton, swinging round, and speaking with a heat pardonable in an earnest inventor. “My road yacht is complete; it’s out there in the yard at this very moment.”

“That thing old Rabbit-skin was poking his nose into! What’s the idea?”

“Well, it’s not exactly new; it’s an adaptation of the sand yacht. With petrol scarce, I asked myself, why waste petrol when the wind can be harnessed for nothing an hour?”

“Jolly patriotic, and sporting too, old son. How’s it work?”

“Well, you see, it’s a light chassis and a skeleton body with a mainsail, rigged sloop fashion, which gives me several miles an hour in a light wind; it’s good for twelve or fourteen in a fair breeze on a good road on the flat. What it can do in the kind of wind we have to-day I don’t know.”

“But hang it all, what if you’re becalmed? And what about hills, and bridges, and all that?”

“You’ve spotted my main difficulty—to obtain the maximum sail area consistent with the stability of the craft and the limitations of road navigation. Of course I’ve got an auxiliary motor for use in calms and uphill; but bridges aren’t such a nuisance as the hedges; they constrict the roads confoundedly. I have to stick to the highway... I say, old chap, just answer that telephone call for me, will you? Another five minutes will see me through.”

Eves walked across to the telephone box in the corner. The following conversation ensued.

“Hullo!”

“Are you Mr. Wilkins?”

“Am I Wilkins, Bob?” (in a whisper).

“Say you’re the British Motor Garage,” said Templeton. “Wilkins is out.”

“Are you there? Righto! We’re the British Motor Garage.”

“Well, I say, sorry to trouble you, but Noakes’s ’phone is out of order. Tell him he can cut his tender thirty per cent.: no other offers.”

“Hold on a jiff.” Eves moved from the mouthpiece and turned towards Templeton. “Noakes again, Bob. Our worthy mayor. You’re to give him a message, something about cutting a tender.”

“Tell him I know nothing about Noakes.”

“Righto! Leave it to me.... Hullo! A tender cut, you said?”

“Can’t you hear? I said, tell Noakes he can cut his tender by thirty per cent.”

“All right; I’ve got it now. But who’s Noakes, and what have we to do with him?”

“Aren’t you Mr. Wilkins?”

“Wilkins is out. I’m speaking from his shop.”

“Oh, hang!”

“He’s cut off, Bob,” said Eves, ruefully, hanging up the receiver. “I wanted to ask him about Methuselah. You’ve done at last?”

“Yes, thank goodness!”

“Well, clean yourself, and come along. Hullo! Here’s another visitor.”

A tall, lean, loosely-built man was hurriedly crossing the yard towards the shop door.

“Good morning to you,” he said, somewhat breathlessly. “I’m just off the train from London, and there’s never a bit of a car, and what’ll I do at all, when I’ve to be at the Upper Edgecombe camp before twelve? I’ll be glad now if so be you can tend me the loan of a car.”

“You’re the second man within ten minutes or so who has wanted to get to the camp in a hurry,” said Templeton.

“Do you say that, now? And what like might the first be, if you please to tell me?”

Templeton was considering how to begin a serious description; but Eves forestalled him.

“A fur-lined coat, a bristly moustache, and a voice like a corncrake. That’s near enough for anythink.”

“It is that,” said the stranger, his blue eyes twinkling for an instant. His expression became grave as he added: “Sure it’s mighty unlucky, without you have a car. They told me in the town I’d get one here, or nowhere at all.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t one handy,” said Templeton. “Ours are out.”

“I say, Bob, what about the road yacht?” said Eves, who had been attracted by the civility of the Irishman, and with quick wit had jumped to the conclusion that he was on the same errand as the boor. “There’s a spanking wind.”

“Well, if he doesn’t mind risking it,” said Templeton, dubiously.

“‘Deed now, I’ll be after risking anything.”

“Anythink?” said Eves.

“You’ll have his measure taken,” said the Irishman, smiling again. “And if it’s a five-pound note——”

“Don’t mention it,” said Templeton. “Tom, just lock up, will you? while I get ready.”

He hastened across the yard, opened the bonnet of the car, and spent a few minutes with the inner mysteries. By the time he had satisfied himself that the engine was in working order the other two had joined him.

“I’ve only a quart of petrol,” he said. “Wilkins has taken the rest, and our monthly allowance isn’t due till to-morrow. The camp’s about eleven miles, and we’ve nearly half an hour; but there’s a stiff hill that will use most of the petrol; it’s an old Ford and can barely do fifteen miles to the gallon.”

“I’ll run up the hill on my two feet to lighten the car,” said the stranger, eagerly; “and sure I’d have run the whole way from the station if I were twenty years younger.”

“You must have been a stayer in your time, sir,” said Eves.

“Maybe I was that, the time I did a Marathon, and was not the last either. Only for being five and forty I wouldn’t be troubling you, for a matter of eleven miles. But it’s a sail I see you have. There’s a nice breeze from the west, surely, and if the car doesn’t upset on us I’m thinking we’d do without petrol only for the hill.”

“Faith removes mountains,” said Eves. “You’ve a pretty good share of it.”

“Faith, and I have then. And if so be the car upsets on us, sure we’ll have a bit of fun, and maybe that’ll make up for the disappointment.”

Eves chatted with the genial Irishman during the few minutes in which Templeton was making his final preparations. These completed, Templeton ran the machine out into the roadway. It was a strange-looking object. The body was little more than a skeleton framework, affording seating accommodation for three, and the necessary protection for the working parts. The drive was on the front wheels; the steering gear connected with the back wheels. A strong single mast was stayed just behind the driver’s seat. A bowsprit projected some five feet beyond the radiator. There were two sails, mainsail and jib. As Templeton unfurled these, Eves noticed that the former had been recently patched.

“Torn in a gale, Bob?” he asked.

“No. The other day a wretched farm wagon claimed more than its fair share of the road, and as of course I wouldn’t give way there was what some people call a contretemps. Look here, Tom, you must manage the mainsail; I can deal with the jib. Get in: we’ve no time to spare.”

Templeton got into the driver’s seat, the other two men into the seats behind. The car was started on petrol, and ran at a moderate pace over the half-mile of narrow road that led to the main street of the little town. Dodging the market traffic, Templeton steered the car out at the further end, and as soon as he was clear of the town slowed down and gave the word to hoist the sails. These bellied out in the brisk following wind; the strange vehicle gathered way; and, looking over his shoulder with a smile of gratification, Templeton said:

“Now we’re off. Look out for gybing at the corners, Tom.”

III

Templeton’s road yacht had been for a week or two a fairly familiar object in the neighbourhood, and the few country folk on foot whom it met or passed in the first few minutes of its voyage graced it with no more attention than was evinced by a stolid stare, a shake of the head, and a sort of prolonged sigh. A spectator of quicker mind—and he would need to have been quick, for the pace was already great—might have taken a fugitive interest in noting the facial expressions of the vehicle’s three occupants. Templeton looked earnest and responsible: Eves wore only the shadow of his usual smile, for he was oppressed by an anxious doubt whether his former experiences of yachting would serve him in handling the sail of this novel craft. The wind was not only strong but gusty, and at slight turns in the road the boom showed a tendency to swing out of his control and commit assault and battery on the person of his passenger. That gentleman, however, was evidently on the top of enjoyment. Whatever his errand was, it was driven from his mind by sheer exhilaration. He lived wholly in the present. Peering over Templeton’s shoulder at the speedometer, he reported with boyish excitement the movements of the indicator—twenty, twenty-five, thirty: “Believe you me, it’s thirty miles; the like of that, now!”

Approaching a sharp bend in the road, Templeton gradually throttled down until the speed was reduced to fifteen; and when, as the yacht rounded the bend, the change of course caused the boom to swing over and knock the Irishman’s hat off, the genial stranger shouted with glee and declared that he was having the time of his life, begor.

Eves hauled in the mainsheet; the pace again rose to twenty-five; and a marked down-grade enabled Templeton to maintain that speed for a time with the engine switched off. At the end of the dip, where the road bent again, Templeton was faced by the first up-grade—a long straight stretch almost in the teeth of the wind. Some little distance from the foot of the incline he switched on his engine, and took the ascent for the most part on top, dropping to first about two hundred yards from the summit. At this point the passenger, looking back along the road, exclaimed:

“There’s a car in the wake of us.”

“Overhauling us?” asked Eves.

“She’s not, then. How would the likes of her?”

“She will, though. We shall have to slow down. Look ahead.”

A heavy farm wagon drawn by three horses had appeared over the crest of the hill, and was lumbering down with skidpans adjusted, and occupying three-fourths of the roadway.

“It’s the way we’d see a collision,” said the Irishman, chortling. The prospect had evidently no terrors for him. Eves, on the other hand, for all his delight in a rag, felt by no means easy in mind.

“Slow down, Bob,” he cried, anxiously, at the same time hauling in the sheet until the sail stood almost parallel with the side of the vehicle.

Templeton made no reply; but knowing from experience that the road yacht was a likely source of anxiety to horses he slowed down, at the imminent risk of stopping entirely, and steered well into the hedge. The carter hurried to the leader’s head and pulled in to his side of the road, giving only a gaping stare as the yacht grazed the off wheels of his wagon and the hedge on the other side.

“As good a bit of steering as ever I saw,” cried the Irishman. “Did you get a whiff of the mangolds?”

“I was expecting to be mangled,” said Eves, grimly. “I say, Bob, the wind’s dead ahead, and the sail’s no bally good.”

“Lower it, man, lower it,” said Templeton. “We’ll be all right at the next turn.”

The yacht was crawling painfully to the top of the hill when there came from behind the sound of a hooter. Eves and the Irishman looked back. A large car had just rounded the bend below, and was mounting the hill with a great roaring and rattling, distinctly audible above the noise of their own straining engine.

“By George, Bob,” cried Eves, “that green car that called at the garage is upon our heels.”

“I hear it,” said Templeton. “Couldn’t mistake it: I’ll give it room to pass.”

Before the yacht had gamed the top of the hill the following car, hooting continuously, closed with it and dashed past.

“I say, Bob,” shouted Eves, “did you see who was in it?”

“No. Didn’t look. Who is it?”

“Rabbit-skin and Noakes.”

“Our Noakes?”

“Philemon, as sure as a gun.”

“Our worthy mayor, evidently. Rummy!”

“What was that you said?” asked Eves, turning to the Irishman, who had uttered a sharp exclamation as the car ran by.

“It was what I don’t care to repeat. The fellow you do be calling Rabbit-skin has the rise got on me, and indeed I’m sorry I put you to the trouble and all.”

“Noakes, you mean?”

“I do not. Noakes is unbeknown to me. But by the look of it that car will get to the camp by twelve o’clock, and we will not, and then Saunders, him with the fur collar, will be the way of slipping in his tender and I’ll be left on the doorstep.”

A light flashed on Eves.

“You’re tendering for the camp waste?” he asked, quickly.

“I was. It was told me Saunders——”

“All right,” Eves interrupted. Leaning over Templeton’s shoulder he said: “I say, Bob, it’s up to you, old man. You remember that telephone call. Noakes and Rabbit-skin are in co. Tendering for the camp waste, you know. He mustn’t get in first with a higher tender. Can you hustle a bit?”

“I daren’t accelerate till we get to the top: daren’t waste petrol. But then——”

The yacht panted slowly up the last few yards of the hill. When it reached the top, the green car, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, was already some three hundred yards ahead, racing along a straight level stretch of road. It was clear that Saunders had recognised a business rival in the Irishman, and was urging his car to its utmost speed.

At the summit a bend in the road had once more brought the wind on the beam. Eves instantly hoisted the sail, and the yacht in a few moments gathered way. The road here ran through an open down; there were no hedges to blanket the yacht; and on the high ground the wind blew with the force of half a gale. Giving signs of the liveliest excitement, the Irishman, his hair flying in the wind, bent over the back of Templeton’s seat, and every few seconds shouted the indications of the speedometer, his voice growing louder as the figures mounted up. “Ten—fourteen—eighteen—twenty”—he followed the pointer round the dial, and when it quivered on 33 he swung his arm round, uttering a wild “Hurroosh!” and was not a whit abashed when Templeton half turned a rebuking face towards him and warned him of the risk of plunging overboard.

There was, in truth, much reason for the man’s ebullient spirits. The engine was switched off: there was little or no vibration; the yacht, as he afterwards declared, seemed to float along the road. Even when she had a decided list to starboard, the near wheels leaving the ground, he laughed as he threw his long body to windward, hanging perilously over the roadway, while Eves with mouth grim-set kept the bounding craft on a broad reach. It was soon apparent that she was more than holding her own with the long car ahead. The cloud of smoke came nearer and nearer, floating across the road to leeward like the trail from the funnel of a tramp steamer.

The green car was running an erratic course more or less in the middle of the road. Within thirty or forty yards of her Templeton insistently sounded his horn and drew over to the right, preparing to pass. Next moment he jammed on his brake hard, with an exclamation seldom heard on his phlegmatic lips. So far from steering to his own side of the road, the driver of the car had also pulled across to the right, with the evident intention of blocking the passage. But for Templeton’s promptitude the bowsprit must inevitably have run into the hood of the car. The jerk threw the Irishman heavily forward over the back of the seat, and when he recovered himself he broke into violent objurgation, which had no more effect on the occupants of the car than the strident blasts of Templeton’s horn. They did not even look round. A turf-cutter on the moor scratched his head and gazed open-mouthed at the novel spectacle, and on the other side two affrighted ponies galloped with tossing manes and tails through and over the whins and gorse.

For the moment Templeton was baffled. Then Eves, leaning forward, shouted, to be heard above the roaring of the car:

“Pass her on the near side, Bob.”

Templeton nodded, reserving for the future his criticism that, in the circumstances, Eves might more properly have used a nautical term. He checked the pace still further until nearly fifty yards separated him from the obstructive car. Then, with his horn at full blast, he released the brake, and the yacht shot forward. As he had expected, the car clung still more closely to the off side, leaving only the narrowest margin between the wheels and the rough edge of the turf. Suddenly, with a turn of the wheel that caused the yacht to lurch giddily, he switched on the engine and ran deftly into the open space on the near side. A yell of delight broke from the Irishman.

“Sit down and be quiet,” shouted Eves, “or we’ll capsize yet.”

Noakes had risen in the car, and was bawling in the ear of the chauffeur. The yacht had drawn level with the car’s wind screen before Templeton’s manoeuvre was appreciated. Now, attempting to counter it, the chauffeur, under Noakes’s vehement prompting, edged towards the left with the object of forcing the lighter-built yacht into the ditch which on this side parted the roadway from the moor. Perceiving the danger, Eves, with the capacity for rising to the occasion which had distinguished him in former enterprises with his friend, instantly eased the mainsheet: the boom swung out, and came into sharp contact, first with Noakes’s head, then with the wind screen, which it shivered to fragments. The chauffeur, who had glanced round, ducked his head and in his flurry gave way for a moment. That moment was long enough. Eves hauled in the sheet, and the yacht, under the dual impulse of engine and wind, shot forward and in a few seconds was clear.

“Hurroosh!” yelled the Irishman, standing with difficulty erect in the swaying vehicle and looking back along the road. “Noakes, if that’s the name of him, is after shaking his fist on us. I wouldn’t say but he’s cursing mighty fine, but sure I can’t hear him for the noise of the creature. Saunders and the driver-man might be having a shindy by the looks of it. His head might be sore on him, and he’ll not deserve it,—the man, I mean: I wouldn’t be wasting a word of pity on Saunders if so be it was him.”

Meanwhile, Templeton, knowing that his petrol would barely last out, had slowed down.

“Tell me if they draw up with us,” he called over his shoulder.

“I will, begor,” said the Irishman. “She’s after doing that same now, and smoking like a tug on the Liffey.”

“He’s driving her hard,” added Eves.

“That’s all right,” said Templeton. “It’s my turn now.”

A bend in the road brought the wind only a few points on the port bow, and Templeton, sparing his petrol, allowed the yacht to lose way. The green car, hooting angrily, and leaving a huge trail of smoke, rattled on at a great pace, and moment by moment lessened the distance between it and the yacht. But Eves and Templeton between them, by their dexterous handling of steering wheel and sail, succeeded where the others had failed. The road was effectively blocked; short of running the yacht down, with the risk of heavy casualties on both sides, as Eves remarked, Noakes and his friend had no means of preventing their Irish competitor from maintaining his lead and coming first to the winning post.

For a full mile the yacht zigzagged from one side of the road to the other. Eves handled the sheet very smartly, but soon found it hopeless to attempt to cope at once with the gustiness of the wind and the sudden swerves of the yacht, and finally contented himself with letting the boom swing freely within a narrow circle, fearing every moment that a lurch would capsize them all. Another turn in the road again gave them the wind; the yacht darted forward on a straight course, and the Irishman reported in high glee that the green car, grunting like Patsy O’Halloran’s pig and snorting like Mike Grady’s bull, was dropping behind as fast as she could run.

“What’s the time?” Templeton called suddenly over his shoulder.

“Nine minutes to the hour,” replied the Irishman, consulting his watch. “Will we do it?”

Now that the exciting part of the race was apparently over, he had become alive to business. Twelve o’clock was the hour named for the lodging of tenders with the camp commandant; “and with the likes of the Army,” he said, “you might be done if so be you was half a wink late. It’s not that I’ve a word to say in favour of any matter of punctuality in the Army; but they’re the way of making a mighty fuss over trifles. It was told me the name they put to it is red tape.”

“We’ll do it,” said Templeton, “provided, first, the petrol lasts out the hill ahead; second, there aren’t any lorries in the way. But in any case we must run it fine, you know. You don’t want Noakes or Saunders to get in at all, I take it.”

“Sorra a bit.”

“Would they tender higher than you?” asked Eves.

“They might.”

“What a pity we didn’t give Noakes that message, Bob. Some one at the camp wanted to give him the tip to cut his tender; there was no other to hand.”

“The like of that, now, and me having the name of an honest man! Will I have time enough to write a word or two with the stump of a pencil? I have my tender in my pocket folded.”

“Better let it alone; we’ll keep Noakes off. He’s still rattling along, Bob; do we get the wind up the hill?”

“I’m afraid not. The road takes an awkward turn; just ahead there, you see. We’ll have to rely on the petrol, and trust to luck.”

The yacht rounded the turn, and the hill came in view—a short sharp spur about a quarter-mile in length. In a trice they dowsed the sails. Templeton switched on the engine, intending to rush the incline. Looking behind somewhat anxiously now, the Irishman declared that the green car was barging on like a mad steam engine. Roaring like a furnace, it seemed to leap over the ground, overhauling the yacht yard by yard until it was three-parts up the hill. Then the clamour suddenly ceased.

“Begor, she’s stopped,” cried the Irishman, exultantly.

“Big ends dropped off,” said Templeton, grinning at Eves over his shoulder. “I gave him fair warning.”

The yacht topped the crest. On the moor to the left a vast assemblage of huts and tents broke upon the view. By the roadside was parked a row of motor lorries. Here and there men were moving about. They stared and shouted to one another at the sight of the strange vehicle sailing towards them, or rather running now merrily on the last gill of petrol. Templeton narrowly escaped colliding with the nearest lorry, then slowed down and enquired the way to the commandant’s office.

“You go in between them huts till you come to a swanky hut with a flag flying atop,” replied the private addressed. “A rum turn-out, this here.”

Driving on to the moor, Templeton was checked by the sentry, to whom, however, the Irishman explained that he was Patrick O’Reilly, come to tender for the camp waste.

“Pass: you’d better tender for the lot of us: we’re all waste here,” said the sentry. “Perhaps if you offered to buy us up they’d demob.”

“I don’t like that,” said Templeton, gravely, as he drove on. “It’s subversive of discipline.”

“Don’t worry,” said Eves with a smile. “He saluted all right. It’s two minutes to twelve: we did jolly well, old man.”

Templeton drew up at the commandant’s hut. O’Reilly sprang out, and after a brief colloquy with the sentry, who looked doubtfully at his bare head and touzled hair, was allowed to enter. In five minutes he returned, in animated converse with the colonel. That officer, acknowledging the punctilious salutes of Eves and Templeton, smiled at the smutty face of the latter, and remarked:

“This is a queer contrivance of yours, my man. I thought Mr. O’Reilly was a lunatic when he told me he’d arrived in a yacht, without being sick, and himself a bad sailor——”

“I am that,” put in O’Reilly, parenthetically. “I wouldn’t like to say how much the Irish Sea is owing me.”

“But I see he’s not so mad as I supposed,” the colonel went on.

“Sure you’d be the better of a voyage in her yourself,” said O’Reilly.

“Thank you. I think I prefer the real article. Not many of these machines in the market, are there?”

“None, sir,” replied Eves, promptly. “It’s the first, a brand-new invention of my friend Templeton here, second lieutenant in the Blankshire Rifles. He’s a repatriated prisoner of war, employing his leave in working out ideas that germinated in captivity. That accounts for his being improperly dressed.”

“Indeed! Is this the Mr. Templeton who narrowly escaped gassing my old friend Colonel Beavis?”

“A pure accident, sir, due to the colonel’s adventurous spirit and a loose screw. Templeton was very much cut up about it.”

“Dry up!” growled Templeton in a fierce undertone.

“Well, I congratulate Mr. O’Reilly,” said the colonel, his eyes twinkling. “I gather that but for Mr. Templeton’s road yacht he wouldn’t have got here till after twelve, and he seemed a little hurt when I told him that a few minutes are neither here nor there. One must give a time limit, of course; but I shouldn’t have turned down a good offer that happened to arrive a few minutes late. But what’s this?”

A crowd of privates, shouting vociferously, was approaching from the direction of the road. A few words were distinguishable in the babel. “This way, governor.” “Two to one on the long un.” And as the throng turned into the lane between the huts, among the khaki figures appeared Philemon Noakes and his fur-coated companion, trotting along in feverish haste. The soldiers fell back as they neared the commandant’s hut, and the two civilians advanced alone.

“Are you the colonel?” asked Noakes, panting.

“I am. You want to see me?”

“I’m the Mayor of Pudlington. This is my friend Ebenezer Saunders, who’s come for to tender for the camp waste.”

“As per advertisement,” added Saunders.

There was something aggressive in each man’s manner of speech. The colonel looked at his wrist watch.

“The time mentioned was twelve o’clock, gentlemen. It is now eight minutes past. You are eight minutes too late.”

“You won’t draw the line so tight,” said Noakes. “A few minutes are neither here nor there in a matter of this sort, and as the Mayor of Pudlington——

“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor——”

“But it’s all along o’ this infernal machine,” cried Noakes, angrily, throwing out his hand towards the road yacht. “It was on the wrong side o’ the road, and we couldn’t pass it no-how; obstructing of the king’s highway: that’s what it was; and as the Mayor of Pudlington I’ll have the law of them, that I will.”

“Oh, come, Mr. Noakes,” said Eves, pleasantly. “You tried that once before, you know. You remember my friend Templeton, even if you’ve forgotten me. As a matter of fact, sir,” he added, turning to the colonel, “they overdrove their car, and the big ends dropped off; otherwise—well, I shouldn’t have been surprised if there’d been a bit of a scrap somewhere about the top of the hill.”

“There would,” said O’Reilly, decisively. “And what’s more, it was the car that blocked the road, and a mighty fine trouble we had, the way we’d circumvent the creature.”

“It’s a scandal,” cried Noakes.

“A regular low-down swindle,” shouted the owner of the fur coat.

“That’ll do, sir,” said the colonel, sharply. “You’ll be good enough to leave the camp—you and the Mayor of Pudlington.”

Noakes threw at Eves a venomous glance—a glance in which was concentrated inextinguishable resentment for the unmasking he had suffered two years before. He made his way with Saunders back to the road and disappeared.

“There’s more in this than meets the eye,” said the colonel, smiling. “Will you gentlemen come into my hut and tell me something more of the Mayor of Pudlington?”

“With pleasure, sir,” replied Eves. “Come along, Bob.”

“Really, I must be getting back,” said Templeton. “There’s the garage, you know. Besides——” He looked over his dirty overalls and grimy hands.

“Well, you’ll have to get some petrol; while you’re doing that I’ll relate what I know of the life history of Noakes. A splendid rag, old man,” he added, as he turned to follow the colonel.