come necessary to ply me with cordial, just part my
lips and continue to pour until I say 'When.' Should---- What are you
stopping for?"

"Very slightly to our rear," said I, "upon the right-hand side of the
road stands a water-trough. You may have noticed it."

"I did," said Berry. "A particularly beautiful specimen of the
palaeolithic epoch. Shall we go on now?"

"Supposing," said I relentlessly, "you plied the radiator. Just take
the cap off and continue to pour till I say 'When.'"

"I should be charmed," was the reply. "Unfortunately I have no vessel
wherewith to----"

"Here you are," said Daphne, thrusting a hotwater bottle into his hand.
"What a mercy I forgot to pack it!"

As I lighted a cigarette--

"It is indeed," said I, "a godsend."

With an awful look, Berry received the godsend and emerged from the car.

After perhaps two minutes he reappeared.

"No good," he said shortly. "The water's too hard or something. The
brute won't look at it."

"Nonsense," said Daphne.

"All right," said her husband. "You go and tempt it. I'm through, I
am."

"Squeeze the air out of it and hold it under the spout."

"But I tell you----"

I took out my watch.

"In another half-hour," I said, "it'll be dark, and we've still forty
kilometres----"

Heavily Berry disappeared.

When I next saw him he was filling the radiator from his hat....

After six journeys he screwed on the cap and made a rush for the car.

"But where's my bottle?" screamed Daphne.

"I rejoice to say," replied Berry, slamming the door, "that full fathom
five the beggar lies."

"You've never dropped----"

"If it's any consolation," said Berry, as I let in the clutch, "he
perished in fair fight. The swine put about a bucket up each of my
sleeves first, and then spat all over my head. Yes, it is funny, isn't
it? Never mind. Game to the last, he went down regurgitating like a
couple of bath-rooms. And now I really am flea-bitten. I can't feel
anything except my trunk."

It was as well that we had taken in water, for very soon, to my dismay,
we began to climb steadily...

Once again we watered--Heaven knows how high up--at a hovel, half barn,
half cottage, where a sturdy mother came lugging a great caldron before
we had named our need. In all conscience, this was obvious enough.
The smell of fiery metal was frightening me to death.

Mercifully, that terrible ascent was the last.

As the day was dying, we dropped do