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“Won’t you want to fill your bunkers, or take water, or oil her up?” said Hinchcliffe.

“We don’t use water, and she’s good for two hundred on one tank o’ petrol if she doesn’t break down.”

“Two hundred miles from ‘ome and mother and faithful Fido to-night, Robert,” said Pyecroft, slapping our guest on the knee. “Cheer up! Why, I’ve known a destroyer do less.”

We passed with some decency through some towns, till by way of the Hastings road we whirled into Cramberhurst, which is a deep pit.

“Now,” said Kysh, “we begin.”

“Previous service not reckoned towards pension,” said Pyecroft. “We are doin’ you lavish, Robert.”

“But when’s this silly game to finish, any’ow?” our guest snarled.

“Don’t worry about the when of it, Robert. The where’s the interestin’ point for you just now.”

I had seen Kysh drive before, and I thought I knew the Octopod, but that afternoon he and she were exalted beyond my knowledge. He improvised on the keys–the snapping levers and quivering accelerators–marvellous variations, so that our progress was sometimes a fugue and sometimes a barn-dance, varied on open greens by the weaving of fairy rings. When I protested, all that he would say was: “I’ll hypnotise the fowl! I’ll dazzle the rooster!” or other words equally futile. And she–oh! that I could do her justice!–she turned her broad black bows to the westering light, and lifted us high upon hills that we might see and rejoice with her. She whooped into veiled hollows of elm and Sussex oak; she devoured infinite perspectives of park palings; she surged through forgotten hamlets, whose single streets gave back, reduplicated, the clatter of her exhaust, and, tireless, she repeated the motions. Over naked uplands she droned like a homing bee, her shadow lengthening in the sun that she chased to his lair. She nosed up unparochial byways and accommodation- roads of the least accommodation, and put old scarred turf or new-raised molehills under her most marvellous springs with never a jar. And since the King’s highway is used for every purpose save traffic, in mid-career she stepped aside for, or flung amazing loops about, the brainless driver, the driverless horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic as I remember that Judic long ago–Judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ankle, achieving incredible improprieties.

We were silent–Hinchcliffe and Pyecroft through professional appreciation; I with a layman’s delight in the expert; and our guest because of fear.

At the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by martello towers.

“Ain’t that Eastbourne yonder?” said our guest, reviving. “I’ve a aunt there–she’s cook to a J.P.–could identify me.”

“Don’t worry her for a little thing like that,” said Pyecroft; and ere he had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic service, the Downs rose between us and the sea, and the Long Man of Hillingdon lay out upon the turf.

“Trevington–up yonder–is a fairly isolated little dorp,” I said, for I was beginning to feel hungry.

“No,” said Kysh. “He’d get a lift to the railway in no time…. Besides, I’m enjoying myself…. Three pounds eighteen and sixpence. Infernal swindle!”

I take it one of his more recent fines was rankling in Kysh’s brain; but he drove like the Archangel of the Twilight.

About the longitude of Cassocks, Hinchcliffe yawned. “Aren’t we goin’ to maroon our Robert? I’m hungry, too.”

“The commodore wants his money back,” I answered.

“If he drives like this habitual, there must be a tidyish little lump owin’ to him,” said Pyecroft. “Well, I’m agreeable.”

“I didn’t know it could be done. S’welp me, I didn’t,” our guest murmured.