The crowd ahead had quickly cleared the road, while Impey, seeing the way clear, was soon tearing at full speed down the street. The official buildings of the empire flashed past on either hand.
Opposite the navy building a great crowd had collected to do honor to one of Japan’s naval heroes.
“Hadn’t you better slow up?” Sydney asked apprehensively, as he realized the density of the crowd, but the driver of the machine gave no heed to the anxious voice behind him. The masterful way in which he guided the great car in and out among carriages, rikishas and pedestrians won the admiration of the midshipmen in spite of their dread of an accident.
“He certainly can handle her,” Phil exclaimed, “but it raises my hair to see the close shaves he makes.”
Just ahead a figure in uniform was running at the side of the roadway. It was plain that he was an official messenger, and carrying government despatches.
Phil gave a warning shout. It seemed to the lad that the machine was bearing down directly upon him—too dangerously close for comfort.
“Why doesn’t he sheer off?” Phil gasped. “That man must be deaf.”
Everything happened so quickly that no appreciable time had elapsed between the sighting of the messenger ahead and the sudden stop made by the car just as the man tried to cross in front of it.
Tingling with nervousness, the midshipmen had cried out repeatedly at Impey’s recklessness, but he turned a deaf ear. The pedestrians could all be depended upon to jump away at the first sound of the horn. Impey doubtless thought the messenger ahead would do the same; but unfortunately for his calculations the man was stone deaf, a pensioned sailor, whose hearing had been ruined in an explosion on shipboard. As the car approached, he was first conscious of its presence, but not its direction, from the information received in the faces of people about him. He suddenly stopped in his tracks bewildered. Even now all would have been well had he not done just the one thing that could lead to disaster.
“Stop her!” both lads cried in horror, but even then they realized it was too late.