I do hate to have people think I'm afraid, so of course I denied it sharply, and we began to fly down hill. Our lamps seemed to have shut the night down closely all around us. We didn't see much except the road with the light flying along it; but suddenly, circling round a curve, there appeared-dark within the brilliant circle of our Bleriot-a great, unlighted waggon lumbering up the hill we were descending, and on the wrong side of the road.
We were close on to it, and oh, Dad, that was a bad moment! It was made up of lightning-quick impressions and feelings, no reasoning at all. Jimmy was frantically blowing the horn, though it was too late to be of much good. I had a vision of a startled Jack-in-the-box man appearing from the bottom of the waggon to snatch wildly at the reins; the next instant our car waltzed round just as it had in Marseilles, twisted off the road, and, with a loud shriek from Aunt Mary, who had clutched me by the arm, we all pitched headlong into darkness.
It felt as if we were falling for ever so long, just as it does in a dream before you wake up with a great start; but I suppose it really wasn't more than a second. The next thing I knew, I was on my hands and knees among some stones; and evidently I'm vainer than I fancied, for among other thoughts coming one on top of the other, I was glad my face wasn't hurt. I've always imagined that it must be terrible for a girl to come to herself after an accident and find she had no face.
I scrambled to my feet and began calling to the others. I think I called Brown first, because, you see, he is so quick in emergencies, and he would be ready to look after the others. But he didn't speak, and the most awful cold, sick feeling settled down on my heart. "Oh, Brown, Brown!" I heard myself crying, just as you hear yourself in a nightmare, and it hardly seemed more real than that. Into the midst of my calling Aunt Mary's voice mingled, and I was thankful, for it didn't sound as if she were much hurt.
Our lamps had gone out, and it was almost pitch dark now, for clouds covered the moon. But there came a glimmer, which kept growing brighter; and looking up I saw a man standing with a lantern held over his head, peering down a steep bank with a look of horror. The same glimmer showed me something else-Brown's face on the ground, white as a stone, his eyes wide open with an unseeing stare. I ran to him, and found that I was pushing Aunt Mary back, as she was trying to get up from somewhere close at hand. She caught at me, and wouldn't let me go by. "Oh dear, oh dear!" she was sobbing, and I begged her to tell me if she were hurt.
"No, thank Heaven! I fell on Brown," she said, "and that saved me."
I could have boxed her ears. One would have thought, to hear her, that he was a sort of fire-escape. I snatched my dress out of her hands, and knelt down beside poor Brown, who was perhaps dead, all through my fault-for I saw now that I ought never to have let Jimmy Payne drive the car. By this time the man with the lantern (it was the carter who had made the trouble for us) had slid down the steep bank, and come straight to where I was kneeling. "Ah, mademoiselle, il est mort!" he exclaimed. How I did hate him! I screamed out, "He isn't, he isn't!" but it was only to make myself believe it wasn't true, and I couldn't help crying-big hot tears that splashed right down into Brown's eyes. And I suppose it was their being so hot that woke him up, for he did wake up, and looked straight at me, dazed at first, then sensibly-such a queer effect, the intelligence and brightness taking the place of that frightened stare. The first thing he said was, "Are you hurt?" And I said "No"; and then I discovered that I was holding his hand as fast as ever I could-only think, holding your chauffeur's hand!-but such a brave, faithful chauffeur, never thinking of his own face, as I had of mine, but of me.
That made me laugh and draw back, and we both said something about being glad. And I wanted to help him, but he didn't need any help, and was up like an arrow the next second. And then, for the first time, I saw the car, standing upright with Jimmy Payne, sitting in it, hanging on like grim death to the steering-post, which he was embracing as if he were a monkey on a stick.
I did laugh at that-one does laugh more when something dreadful has nearly happened, but not quite, than at any other time, I think-though into the midst of my laugh came a sudden little pain. It was in my left wrist, and it ached hard, one quick throb after another, as if they were in a hurry to get their chance to hurt. But I didn't say anything, for it seemed such a trifle. Brown assured me that he was "right as rain," that he'd only been dazed and perhaps unconscious for a minute through falling on his head. I wondered if he knew about Aunt Mary. But it was too delicate a subject to raise. Anyway, she hadn't a bruise. And wasn't it extraordinary about Jimmy? The car had "fallen on its feet," so to speak, and he had hung on to the steering-post so hard that not only had he kept his seat, but he had wrenched the steering-gear. Brown discovered this in peering into the works by the light of one of our own oil-lamps, relit from the carter's lantern. If the Napier hadn't been a magnificent car it would have been frightfully damaged, although, finding itself compelled to take a twelve-foot jump off the road, it had cleverly chosen comparatively smooth, meadow-like ground to descend upon. Not even a tyre was punctured; no harm whatever appeared to have been done except that, as I said, owing to Jimmy's savage contortions in search of safety, the steering-gear was wrenched.
There's a thing called a worm in steering-gear, it seems, also a rod; and new ones would have to be fitted in ours before we could go on again. When I heard this I felt rather qualmish, for my wrist was aching a good deal, and had begun to swell. Brown and the carter were talking together, and according to them the best thing seemed to be to carry luggage and rugs to the nearest village, Le Beausset, and try to get accommodation there for the night. Brown would go on to Toulon, he said, and try to get new parts for the car, with which he'd come back early in the morning.