“To Madrid, top speed, quickest way,” was the word; and I hoped for a non-stop run, or as near it as possible.
The quickest way was by Jaen, a road which none of us knew, and the starlit sky was obscured by dark clouds which heralded a summer thunder-storm. As Ropes steered across the Vega towards that gap in the mountains which is the door of the north, there came a waterspout of rain on the roof. Thunder drowned the purr of the motor, and a flash of lightning every other moment dimmed the flying circle of our acetylenes. There had been rain more than once of late, and this deluge made the road, already bad, soft and greasy as an outworn sponge. The Gloria waltzed and slipped in a mass of brown porridge, but Ropes knew that we were to drive against time, and, throwing caution to the wind, tore through the treacherous mud as if to win the cup in a great race.
We flung Granada behind us, dashing in among the foothills of the mountains, mounting a slippery defile, with the rain like whips lashing our faces. Orchards flashed by; there was a rock tunnel, where the lights shone fiercely on rough-hewn stone, and the thrum of the motor became a roar.
Out again, and still up, the beams from our lamps shooting across vineyards, plantations of figs and pomegranates, and striking silver from the curves of the Guadalbullon River. A [pg 344]glimpse of an old castle commanding a dark gorge, and we were at Jaen; then, presently, the road became familiar, for we had travelled it before. At this very corner we had stopped to ask the way of men who carried strange implements like fire-extinguishers, for this was Bailen; but now, instead of receiving our first glimpse of Andalucía, we were leaving it behind.
Eighty miles out of two hundred and seventy we had come, though the pace had not been good. Still the rain was ceasing, and we could make up for lost time, as country traffic had not begun yet.
La Carolina, Santa Elena; the road was mounting for the well-remembered defile of Despeñaperros. Hoot! went the siren, screaming along the face of tremendous cliffs, and a louder shriek rang as if an echo. A line of fire down in the gorge meant the train from Madrid to Seville. It glittered like a string of stars drawn across a spider's-web viaduct, then vanished into a tunnel, while we swept on towards the plains of La Mancha, Ropes crouched like a goblin over his wheel.
Rain again, blurring villages, and sweeping through the stone streets of a town: fields once more, and at last Manzanares. There Dick insisted that we should stop for food, lest strength fail me when I should need it most; but I could not bear to go back to the fonda I knew, to see the pretty girls there look at my pale face with shocked eyes, perhaps to have them question me about the “white and gold angel.”
It was eight o'clock when we got away from the café, where we had spent some twenty minutes; and the road was no longer clear. We were obliged to moderate our speed, and lost more time than we could afford getting on to Aranjuez.
“Do your best now, Ropes,” I was saying, when the Gloria—for once perverse—burst a tyre with a loud explosion. Ropes threw me a rueful look.
“I'd hoped to get through without trouble, sir,” he said, “but the car's lain up for more than five weeks, and there was no time last night to look her over.”