Steam Tactics
by
I caught sight of their faces as we came up behind the cart in the narrow Sussex lane; but though it was not eleven o’clock, they were both asleep.
That the carrier was on the wrong side of the road made no difference to his language when I rang my bell. He said aloud of motor-cars, and specially of steam ones, all the things which I had read in the faces of superior coachmen. Then he pulled slantwise across me.
There was a vociferous steam air-pump attached to that car which could be applied at pleasure….
The cart was removed about a bowshot’s length in seven and a quarter seconds, to the accompaniment of parcels clattering. At the foot of the next hill the horse stopped, and the two men came out over the tail-board.
My engineer backed and swung the car, ready to move out of reach.
“The blighted egg-boiler has steam up,” said Mr. Hinchcliffe, pausing to gather a large stone. “Temporise with the beggar, Pye, till the sights come on!”
“I can’t leave my ‘orse!” roared the carrier; “but bring ’em up ‘ere, an’ I’ll kill ’em all over again.”
“Good morning, Mr. Pyecroft,” I called cheerfully. “Can I give you a lift anywhere?”
The attack broke up round my forewheels.
“Well, we do ‘ave the knack o’ meeting in puris naturalibus, as I’ve so often said.” Mr. Pyecroft wrung my hand. “Yes, I’m on leaf. So’s Hinch. We’re visiting friends among these kopjes.”
A monotonous bellowing up the road persisted, where the carrier was still calling for corpses.
“That’s Agg. He’s Hinch’s cousin. You aren’t fortunit in your family connections, Hinch. ‘E’s usin’ language in derogation of good manners. Go and abolish ‘im.”
Henry Salt Hinchcliffe stalked back to the cart and spoke to his cousin. I recall much that the wind bore to me of his words and the carrier’s. It seemed as if the friendship of years were dissolving amid throes.
“‘Ave it your own silly way, then,” roared the carrier, “an’ get into Linghurst on your own silly feet. I’ve done with you two runagates.” He lashed his horse and passed out of sight still rumbling.
“The fleet’s sailed,” said Pyecroft, “leavin’ us on the beach as before. Had you any particular port in your mind?”
“Well, I was going to meet a friend at Instead Wick, but I don’t mind–“
“Oh! that’ll do as well as anything! We’re on leaf, you see.”
“She’ll hardly hold four,” said my engineer. I had broken him of the foolish habit of being surprised at things, but he was visibly uneasy.
Hinchcliffe returned, drawn as by ropes to my steam-car, round which he walked in narrowing circles.
“What’s her speed?” he demanded of the engineer.
“Twenty-five,” said that loyal man.
“Easy to run?”
“No; very difficult,” was the emphatic answer.
“That just shows that you ain’t fit for your rating. D’you suppose that a man who earns his livin’ by runnin’ 30-knot destroyers for a parstime–for a parstime, mark you!–is going to lie down before any blighted land- crabbing steam-pinnace on springs?”
Yet that was what he did. Directly under the car he lay and looked upward into pipes–petrol, steam, and water–with a keen and searching eye.
I telegraphed Mr. Pyecroft a question.
“Not–in–the–least,” was the answer. “Steam gadgets always take him that way. We had a bit of a riot at Parsley Green through his tryin’ to show a traction-engine haulin’ gipsy-wagons how to turn corners.”
“Tell him everything he wants to know,” I said to the engineer, as I dragged out a rug and spread it on the roadside.
“He don’t want much showing,” said the engineer. Now, the two men had not, counting the time we took to stuff our pipes, been together more than three minutes.
“This,” said Pyecroft, driving an elbow back into the deep verdure of the hedge-foot, “is a little bit of all right. Hinch, I shouldn’t let too much o’ that hot muckings drop in my eyes, Your leaf’s up in a fortnight, an’ you’ll be wantin’ ’em.”