The driver had two notches remaining on his spark advance. He thumbed the lever forward, and the car responded with a trifle more of speed. It was straining every bolt and nut to its utmost capacity of strength.
The bicycle officer, clinging half a minute to a hope made forlorn by his sheer human lack of endurance, drifted to rearward with the dust.
Once more Garrison peered out behind. The big red demon, tearing down the road, was warming to its work. With cylinders heating, and her mixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had taken on a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space across the earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been more exciting than these liberated chariots of power.
There was no time to talk; there was scarcely time to think. The road, the landscape, the very world, became a dizzying blur that destroyed all distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and the rapid-fire fusillade from the motor, all sense of hearing was benumbed.
A craze for speed took possession of the three—Dorothy, Garrison, the driver. The power to think on normal lines was being swept away. Such mania as drives a lawless comet comes inevitably upon all who ride with such space-defying speed. The one idea is more—more speed—more freedom—more recklessness of spirit!
A village seven miles from Woodsite, calm in its half-deserted state, with its men all at business in New York, was cleaved, as it were, by the racing machines, while women and children ran and screamed to escape from the path of the monsters.
The fellow behind was once more creeping up. The time consumed in going seven miles had been barely ten minutes. In fifteen minutes more, at his present rate of gain, the driver behind would be up alongside, and then—who knew what would happen?
Dorothy had started as if to speak, at least a dozen times. She was now holding on with all her strength, aware that conversation was wholly out of the question.
Garrison was watching constantly through the glass. The race could hardly last much longer. They were rapidly approaching a larger town, where such speed would be practically criminal. If only they could gain a lead and dart into town and around some corner, into traffic of sufficient density to mask his movements, he and Dorothy might perhaps alight and escape observation on foot, while the car led pursuit through the streets.
About to suggest some such plan to his driver, he was suddenly sickened by a sharp report, like a pistol fired beneath the car. He feared for a tire, but the noise came again, and then three times, quickly, in succession. One of the cylinders was missing. Not only was the power cut down by a fourth, but compression in the engine thus partially "dead" was a drag on the others of the motor.