The boy fought to defend his master’s property, briefly, but still he fought, till a happy stroke in the wind laid him on the sun-warmed turf. The screams of the invalid—it was a female—sounded in the ears of Jones like part of some fantastic dream, so seemed the bicycle. It had no bell, the saddle wanted raising at least two inches, still it went, and the wind was behind.
On the right was a sheer drop of two hundred feet, and the road here skirted the cliff edge murderously close, for the simple reason that cliff falls had eaten the bordering grass to within a few feet of the road. This course on an unknown and questionable bicycle laden with parcels of tea and sugar, was open to a good many objections; they did not occur to Jones; he was making good speed, or thought he was till the long declivity leading to Northbourne was reached. Here he began to know what speed really was, for he found on pressing the lever that the brake would not act. Fortunately it was a free wheel.
This declivity runs between detached villas and stone walls, sheltering prim gardens, right on to the west end of the esplanade, which is, in fact, a continuation of it. For the first few hundred yards Jones thought that nothing could go quicker than the houses and walls rushing past him, towards the end he was not thinking.
The esplanade opened out, a happy band of children with buckets and wooden spades, returning home to tea, opened out, gave place to rushing apartment houses with green balconies on the left, rushing sea scape and bathing machines on the right. Then the speed slackened.
He got off shaking, and looked behind him. He had reached the east end of the promenade. It lay, as it always lies towards five o’clock, absolutely deserted by visitors. In the distance and just stepped out of a newspaper kiosk a woman was standing, shading her eyes and looking towards him. Two boatmen near her were looking in the same direction. They did not seem excited, just mildly interested.
At that moment appeared on the long slope leading down to the esplanade the figure of a man running. He looked like a policeman—a sea-side policeman.
Jones did not pause to verify. He propped the bicycle against the rails of a verandahed house and ran.
The esplanade at this, the eastern end, ascends to the town by a zig-zag road. As he took this ascent the mind of Jones, far from being clouded or dulled, was acutely active. It saw that now the railway station of Northbourne was out of count, flight by train was impossible, for the station was the very first place that would be watched. The coast line, to judge by present results, was impossible, for it seemed that to keep to it he might go on for ever being chased till he reached John o’ Groats.
Northbourne is the twin image of Sandbourne-on-Sea, the same long high street, the same shops with blinds selling the same wares, the same trippers, children with spades, and invalids.
The two towns are rivals, each claiming the biggest brass band, the longest esplanade, the fewer deaths from drowning, the best drains, the most sunlight, and the swiftest trains from London. Needless to say that one of them is not speaking the truth, a fact that does not seem to disturb either of them in the least.