The Man from the Quarter laid down his glass.
“How far is it?” This man is so daft on fishing that he has been known to kiss the first trout he hooks in the spring.
“Only fifty-six miles, my dear boy—run you over in an hour.”
“And everything else that gets in the way,” said the Man from the Quarter, moving his glass nearer the Sculptor's elbow.
“No danger of that—I've got a siren that you can hear for a mile—but really, it's only a step.”
I once slid down a salt mine on a pair of summer pantaloons and brought up in total darkness (a godsend under the circumstances). I still shudder when I think of the speed; of the way my hair tried to leave my scalp; of the peculiar blink in my eyes; of the hours it took to live through forty seconds; and of my final halt in the middle of a moon-faced, round-paunched German who was paid a mark for saving the bones and necks of idiots like myself.
This time the sliding was done in an overcoat (although the summer sun was blazing), a steamer cap, and a pair of goggles. First there came a shivery chuggetty-chug, as if the beast was shaking himself loose. Next a noise like the opening of a bolt in an iron cage, and then the Inn of William the Conqueror—the village-beach, inlet—wide sea, streamed behind like a panorama run at high pressure.
The first swoop was along the sea, a whirl into Houlgate, a mad dash through the village, dogs and chickens running for dear life, and out again with the deadly rush of a belated wild goose hurrying to a southern clime. Our host sat beside the chauffeur, who looked like the demon in a ballet in his goggles and skull-cap. The Man from the Quarter and I crouched on the rear seats, our eyes on the turn of the road ahead. What we had left behind, or what might be on either side of us was of no moment; what would come around that far-distant curve a mile away and a minute off was what troubled us. The demon and the Sculptor were as cool as the captain and first mate on the bridge of a liner in a gale; the Man from the Quarter stared doggedly ahead; I was too scared for scenery and too proud to ask the Sculptor to slow down, so I thought of my sins and slowly murmured, “Now I lay me.”
When we got to the top of the last hill and had swirled into the straight broad turnpike leading to Lisieux, the Sculptor spoke in an undertone to the demon, did something with his foot or hand or teeth—everything with which he could push, pull, or bite was busy—and the machine, as if struck by a lash, sprang into space. Trees, fences, little farmhouses, hay-stacks, canvas-covered wagons, frightened children, dogs, now went by in blurred outlines; ten miles, thirty miles, then a string of villages, Liseau among them, the siren shrieking like a lost soul sinking into perdition.