And then suddenly out of nowhere Bealby came rolling down to his feet, a dishevelled and earthy Bealby. But Bealby.
“Good Lord!” cried the Captain, starting to his feet and holding the map like a sword sheath.
“What do you want?”
For a second Bealby was a silent spectacle of misery.
“Oooh! I want my breckfuss,” he burst out at last, reduced to tears.
“Are you young Bealby?” asked the Captain, seizing him by the shoulder.
“They’re after me,” cried Bealby. “If they catch me they’ll put me in prison. Where they don’t give you anything. It wasn’t me did it—and I ’aven’t had anything to eat—not since yesterday.”
The Captain came rapidly to a decision. There should be no more faltering. He saw his way clear before him. He would act—like a whistling sword. “Here! jump up behind,” he said ... “hold on tight to me....”
§ 8
For a time there was a more than Napoleonic swiftness in the Captain’s movements. When Bealby’s pursuer came up to the hedge that looks down into the sunken road, there was no Bealby, no Captain, nothing but a torn and dishevelled county map, an almost imperceptible odour of petrol and a faint sound—like a distant mowing machine—and the motor bicycle was a mile away on the road to Beckinstone. Eight miles, eight rather sickening miles, Bealby did to Beckinstone in eleven minutes, and there in a little coffee house he was given breakfast with eggs and bacon and marmalade (Prime!), and his spirit was restored to him while the Captain raided a bicycle and repairing shop and negotiated the hire of an experienced but fairly comfortable wickerwork trailer. And so, to London through the morning sunshine, leaving tramps, pursuers, policemen, handbills, bakers, market gardeners, terrors of the darkness and everything upon the road behind—and further behind and remote and insignificant—and so to the vanishing point.