"It was what I don't care to repeat. The fellow you do be calling Rabbit-skin has the rise got on me, and indeed I'm sorry I put you to the trouble and all."
"Noakes, you mean?"
"I do not. Noakes is unbeknown to me. But by the look of it that car will get to the camp by twelve o'clock, and we will not, and then Saunders, him with the fur collar, will be the way of slipping in his tender and I'll be left on the doorstep."
A light flashed on Eves.
"You're tendering for the camp waste?" he asked, quickly.
"I was. It was told me Saunders——"
"All right," Eves interrupted. Leaning over Templeton's shoulder he said: "I say, Bob, it's up to you, old man. You remember that telephone call. Noakes and Rabbit-skin are in co. Tendering for the camp waste, you know. He mustn't get in first with a higher tender. Can you hustle a bit?"
"I daren't accelerate till we get to the top: daren't waste petrol. But then——"
The yacht panted slowly up the last few yards of the hill. When it reached the top, the green car, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, was already some three hundred yards ahead, racing along a straight level stretch of road. It was clear that Saunders had recognised a business rival in the Irishman, and was urging his car to its utmost speed.
At the summit a bend in the road had once more brought the wind on the beam. Eves instantly hoisted the sail, and the yacht in a few moments gathered way. The road here ran through an open down; there were no hedges to blanket the yacht; and on the high ground the wind blew with the force of half a gale. Giving signs of the liveliest excitement, the Irishman, his hair flying in the wind, bent over the back of Templeton's seat, and every few seconds shouted the indications of the speedometer, his voice growing louder as the figures mounted up. "Ten—fourteen—eighteen—twenty"—he followed the pointer round the dial, and when it quivered on 33 he swung his arm round, uttering a wild "Hurroosh!" and was not a whit abashed when Templeton half turned a rebuking face towards him and warned him of the risk of plunging overboard.