*       *       *       *       *

The motor came round about eleven, and we started at once, Harry and Mrs
Morrison, a cousin of his, sitting behind in the big back seat, large
enough to hold a comfortable three, and I on the left of the driver, in
a sort of trance--I am not ashamed to confess it--of expectancy and
delight. For this was in the early days of motors, when there was still
the sense of romance and adventure round them. I did not want to drive,
any more than Harry wanted to; for driving, so I hold, is too absorbing;
it takes the attention in too firm a grip: the mania of the true
motorist is not consciously enjoyed. For the passion for motors is a
taste--I had almost said a gift--as distinct and as keenly individual as
the passion for music or mathematics. Those who use motors most (merely
as a means of getting rapidly from one place to another) are often
entirely without it, while those whom adverse circumstances (over which
they have no control) compel to use them least may have it to a supreme
degree. To those who have it, analysis of their passion is perhaps
superfluous; to those who have it not, explanation is almost
unintelligible. Pace, however, and the control of pace, and above all
the sensuous consciousness of pace, is at the root of it; and pleasure
in pace is common to most people, whether it be in the form of a
galloping horse, or the pace of the skate hissing over smooth ice, or
the pace of a free-wheel bicycle humming down-hill, or, more
impersonally, the pace of the smashed ball at lawn-tennis, the driven
ball at golf, or the low boundary hit at cricket. But the sensuous
consciousness of pace, as I have said, is needful: one might experience
it seated in front of the engine of an express train, though not in a
wadded, shut-windowed carriage, where the wind of movement is not felt. Then add to this rapture of the rush through riven air the knowledge
that huge relentless force is controlled by a little lever, and
directed by a little wheel on which the hands of the driver seem to lie
so negligently. A great untamed devil has there his bridle, and he
answers to it, as Harry had said, like a horse with a fine mouth. He has
hunger and thirst, too, unslakeable, and greedily he laps of his soup of
petrol which turns to fire in his mouth: electricity, the force that
rends clouds asunder, and causes towers to totter, is the spoon with
which he feeds himself; and as he eats he races onward, and the road
opens like torn linen in front of him. Yet how obedient, how amenable is
he!--for with a touch on his snaffle his speed is redoubled, or melts
into thin air, so that before you know you have touched the rein he has
exchanged his swallow-flight for a mere saunter through the lanes. But
he ever loves to run; and knowing this, you will bid him lift up his
voice and tell those who are in his path that he is coming, so that he
will not need the touch that checks. Hoarse and jovial is his voice,
hooting to the wayfarer; and if his hooting be not heard he has a great
guttural falsetto scream that leaps from octave to octave, and echoes
from the hedges that are passing in blurred lines of hanging green. And,
as you go, the romantic isolation of divers in deep seas is yours;
masked and hooded companions may be near you also, in their
driving-dress for this plunge through the swift tides of air; but you,
like them, are alone and isolated, conscious only of the ripped riband
of road, the two great lantern-eyes of the wonderful monster that look
through drooped eyelids by day, but gleam with fire by night, the two
ear-laps of splash-boards, and the long lean bonnet in front which is
the skull and brain-case of that swift, untiring energy that feeds on
fire, and whirls its two tons of weight up hill and down dale, as if
some new law as everlasting as gravity, and like gravity making it go
ever swifter, was its sole control. For the first hour the essence of these joys, any description of which
compared to the real thing is but as a stagnant pond compared to the
bright rushing of a mountain stream, was mine. A straight switchback
road lay in front of us, and the monster plunged silently down hill, and
said below his breath, “Ha-ha--ha-ha--ha-ha,” as, without diminution of
speed, he breasted the opposing slope. In my control were his great
vocal chords (for in those days hooter and syren were on the driver’s
left, and lay convenient, to the hand of him who occupied the box-seat),
and it rejoiced me to let him hoot to a pony-cart, three hundred yards
ahead, with a hand on his falsetto scream if his ordinary tones of
conversation were unheard or disregarded. Then came a road crossing ours
at right angles, and the dear monster seemed to say, “Yes, yes,--see how
obedient and careful I am. I stroll with my hands in my pockets.” Then
again a puppy from a farmhouse staggered warlike into the road, and the
monster said, “Poor little chap! get home to your mother, or I’ll talk
to you in earnest.” The poor little chap did not take the hint, so the
monster slackened speed and just said, “Whoof!” Then it chuckled to
itself as the puppy scuttled into the hedge, seriously alarmed; and next
moment our self-made wind screeched and whistled round us again. Napoleon, I believe, said that the power of an army lay in its feet:
that is true also of the monster. There was a loud bang, and in thirty
seconds we were at a standstill. The monster’s off fore-foot troubled
it, and the chauffeur said, “Yes, sir,--burst.”

So the burst boot was taken off and a new one put on, a boot that had
never been on foot before. The foot in question was held up on a jack
during this operation, and the new boot laced up with a pump. This took
exactly twenty-five minutes. Then the monster got his spoon going again,
and said, “Let me run: oh, let me run!” And for fifteen miles on a
straight and empty road it ran. I timed the miles, but shall not produce
their chronology for the benefit of a forsworn constabulary. But there were no more dithyrambics that morning. We should have reached
Hunstanton in time for lunch. Instead, we waited to repair our fourth
puncture at 1.45 P.M., twenty-five miles short of our destination. This
fourth puncture was caused by a spicule of flint three-quarters of an
inch long--sharp, it is true, but weighing perhaps two pennyweights,
while we weighed two tons. It seemed an impertinence. So we lunched at a
wayside inn, and during lunch the pundits held a consultation, of which
the upshot was this:

We had no more boots for our monster, for his off fore-foot had burst
once, and punctured once (thus necessitating two socks and one boot). Similarly, but more so, his off hind-foot had burst twice (thus
necessitating two boots and two socks). Now, there was no certain
shoemaker’s shop at Hunstanton, as far as we knew, but there was a
regular universal store at King’s Lynn, which was about equidistant.