“No; very difficult,” was the emphatic answer.
“That just shows that you ain’t fit for your rating. D’you suppose that a man who earns his livin’ by runnin’ 30-knot destroyers for a parstime—for a parstime, mark you!—is going to lie down before any blighted land-crabbing steam-pinnace on springs?”
Yet that was what he did. Directly under the car he lay and looked upward into pipes—petrol, steam, and water—with a keen and searching eye.
I telegraphed Mr. Pyecroft a question.
“Not—in—the—least,” was the answer. “Steam gadgets always take him that way. We had a bit of a riot at Parsley Green through his tryin’ to show a traction-engine haulin’ gipsy-wagons how to turn corners.”
“Tell him everything he wants to know,” I said to the engineer, as I dragged out a rug and spread it on the roadside.
“He don’t want much showing,” said the engineer. Now, the two men had not, counting the time we took to stuff our pipes, been together more than three minutes.
“This,” said Pyecroft, driving an elbow back into the deep verdure of the hedge-foot, “is a little bit of all right. Hinch, I shouldn’t let too much o’ that hot muckings drop in my eyes. Your leaf’s up in a fortnight, an’ you’ll be wantin’ ’em.”
“Here!” said Hinchcliffe, still on his back, to the engineer. “Come here and show me the lead of this pipe.” And the engineer lay down beside him.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Hinchcliffe, rising. “But she’s more of a bag of tricks than I thought. Unship this superstructure aft”—he pointed to the back seat—“and I’ll have a look at the forced draught.”