his face masked by hideous goggles. He swept down towards the place where I lay at a terrific pace, and, half in wonder at the sight, and half fascinated by it, I drew myself forward through the bushes until I lay at the very side of the road, with my chin uplifted and my face literally peering through the hedge.
The grey monster came on and on, and the curious thing was that it slackened speed a little as it got near to me, so that I saw the dusty outlines of it, and the great bulk of it set low between its wheels, and caught the sound of its sobbing breath. And then it stopped at the side of the road, so near to me that I could almost have stretched out a hand and touched the nearest wheel.
The man got down stiffly out of his seat, and thrust the goggles up over his cap and began to pull off his driving-gloves. Something had gone wrong with the monster, and I heard the man heave a quick sigh as he bent down to examine the machinery. For a little time his head disappeared among the works, and then, with a grunt of relief, he straightened himself and began pulling on his gloves; and so, by a miracle, turning his head a little, looked down into my upturned face.
He was a youngish man with a thin, keen, shaven face, tight-lipped and clear-eyed. He had on a long grey coat, buttoned close about him, and his appearance, with the cap drawn down over his ears and the goggles set on the front of it, was not altogether prepossessing. But the man looked a sportsman, and somehow or other I was attracted to him. Scarcely knowing what I did, I glanced to right and left along the road, and then rose to my feet in the ditch.
He gave a low whistle, and nodded slowly, finished pulling on his gloves, and set his gloved hands against his sides. "Hullo, my friend," he said at last, "I heard about you on the hill up yonder. You're wanted badly."
"I know that," I said huskily, for my throat was dry, alike from thirst and from a new fear that had sprung up in me. "Perhaps you'd like to drive me back to meet them."
"If you're anxious," he retorted, with a laugh. "Only it happens that I'm not that sort. It would be playing it rather low down to do that, wouldn't it?"
"I should think so," I said, answering his laugh with another that had something of a sob in it.
"What's your particular crime?" he asked. "Murder?"
"Nothing half so bad as that," I answered him. "I stole some money, and had a good time; now I've been paying the penalty. I've done nearly one out of my ten years."
He turned away abruptly, and I heard him mutter something which sounded like "Poor devil!" but I would not be sure of that. Then, after bending for a moment again over his car, he said, without looking up at me, "I take it you'd like to get out of this part of the country, if possible?"
"Anywhere!" I exclaimed, in a shaking whisper. "I only want a chance."
He looked along the lines of the grey monster, and laid his hand upon the machine affectionately. "Then you can't do better than travel with me," he said. "I can swing you along at a pace that'll knock the breath out of you if you're not used to it, and I can drop you a hundred miles or so along the road. There's no one in sight; get in. Here's a spare pair of goggles."
I adjusted the goggles with a shaking hand, and tried to thank him. He had tossed a short grey coat to me, and that I put about my shoulders. Almost before I was in the seat beside him the grey car began to move, and then I saw the landscape slipping past us in two streaks. I tried once or twice to speak, but the words were driven back into my mouth, and I could not get anything articulate out.
My recollection of that journey is dim and obscure. I only know that now and then, as we flew along, the man jerked out questions at me, and so discovered that I had had nothing to eat all day, and was practically famished. He slowed down the car and showed me where, in a tin case under my feet, were some sandwiches and a flask; and I took in sandwiches and dust gratefully enough for the next few miles, and gulped down a little out of the flask. The houses were beginning to be more frequent, and we met more vehicles on the road, when presently he slowed down to light his lamps.
"At what particular spot would you like to be dropped?" he asked, as he came round my side of the car and bent down over the lamp there. "Choose for yourself."
I told him I hardly knew; I think then, for the first time, I realised that I was in as bad a case as ever, and that, save for my short coat and the goggles, I was clad exactly as when I had dropped over my prison wall. I think I told him that all places were alike to me, and that I would leave it to him.
So we went on again at a diminishing speed, with the motor horn sounding continuously; flashed through an outlying village or two, until I saw, something to my horror, that the man was drawing into London. I turned to him to protest, but he smiled and shook his head.
"Don't you worry; I'm going to see you through this – just for the sport of the thing," he said, raising his voice to a shout, so that he might be heard above the roar of the flying wheels. "I'm going to take you slap through London to my place, and I'm going to give you a change of clothes and some food. To-morrow, if you like, I'll whack you down to the coast, and ship you off somewhere. You're as safe as houses with me; I've taken an interest in you."
I could only sit still, and wonder what good providence had suddenly tossed this man into my world to do this thing for me. I could have kissed his hands; I could have worshipped him, as one might worship a god. I felt that my troubles were over; for the first time in all my life I had someone to lean upon, someone willing and anxious to help me.
And then as suddenly the whole thing came to an end. We had got through a village in safety, and had swung at a terrific pace round a corner, and there was a huge hay-waggon in the very middle of the road. There was no time to pull up, and the road was too narrow to allow the car free passage on either side. I heard the man beside me give a gasp as he bent over his wheel, and then we swerved to the right, and flew up the bank at the side of the road, in a mad endeavour to pass the waggon.
We shot past it somehow, and I thought we should drop to the road again; instead, the car continued up the bank, seemed to hang there for a moment, even at the terrific pace we were going, and then began to turn over. I say began to turn over because in that fraction of a second events seemed to take hours to finish. I know I jumped, and landed all in a heap, and seemed to see, as I fell, the car before me turning over; and then for a moment or two I knew nothing.
When I recovered consciousness I got slowly to my knees, and looked about me. My head ached fearfully, but I seemed to have no very great injuries. A dozen yards in front of me lay the grey monster, with three wheels left to it, and those three upreared helplessly in the air. My friend the driver I could not see anywhere. I staggered to my feet, relieved to find that I could walk, and went forward to the car; and there, on the other side of it, lay my friend, doubled up and unconscious. He, too, seemed to have escaped any very great injury as by a miracle. I straightened him out and touched him here and there, in the hope to discover if any bones were broken; he only groaned a little, and even that sound was cheering. The man was not dead.
I had no thought of my own safety until I heard the rumble of wheels, and saw the cause of all the disaster – that hay-waggon – coming towards me. From the opposite direction, too, I heard the sharp toot-toot of a motor horn, and knew that help was coming. And then, for the first time, I realised that that help was not for me, and that I must not remain where I was a moment longer: for if my situation had been bad before, it was now truly frightful. I was somewhere in the neighbourhood of London – near to a northern suburb – and I was in convict garb, partially concealed by a short grey coat, and I was hatless.
Fortunately for me, by this time it was dark, and I had only seen that hay-waggon looming up, as it were, against the evening sky. Knowing that my friend must soon receive better help than I could give him, I decided that that episode in my life at least was closed. I slipped off my goggles and dropped them beside him; then, after a momentary glance round, I decided to try for a fence at one side, opposite that bank that had been our undoing. It was not very high, just within reach of my hands. I made a jump for the top and scrambled over, and dropped among some undergrowth on the further side of it.
There is a humorous side to everything; even in my plight I was compelled to laugh at what I now saw through a chink in the fence. I peered out to see what became of my friend, and as I did so I saw that another