“’Taint as sweet as steam, o’ course; but for power it’s twice the Furious against half the Jaseur in a head-sea.”
Volumes could not have touched it more exactly. His bright eyes were glued on Kysh’s hands juggling with levers behind the discreet backward sloping dash.
“An’ what sort of a brake might you use?” he said politely.
“This,” Kysh replied, as the last of the hill shot up to one in eight. He let the car run back a few feet and caught her deftly on the brake, repeating the performance cup and ball fashion. It was like being daped above the Pit at the end of an uncoiled solar plexus. Even Pyecroft held his breath.
“It ain’t fair! It ain’t fair!” our guest moaned. “You’re makin’ me sick.”
“What an ungrateful blighter he is!” said Pyecroft. “Money couldn’t buy you a run like this … Do it well overboard!”
“We’ll just trundle up the Forest and drop into the Park Row, I think,” said Kysh. “There’s a bit of good going hereabouts.”
He flung a careless knee over the low raking tiller that the ordinary expert puts under his armpit, and down four miles of yellow road, cut through barren waste, the Octopod sang like a six-inch shell.
“Whew! But you know your job,” said Hinchcliffe. “You’re wasted here. I’d give something to have you in my engine-room.”
“He’s steering with ’is little hind-legs,” said Pyecroft. “Stand up and look at him, Robert. You’ll never see such a sight again!”