es; but you never saw
'em reach where they was goin'--time they done that we was somewheres
round the next bend. A pullet run over us once--yes, I mean just that.
She clawed the top of the widow's bunnit as we slid underneath her, and
by the time she lit we was so fur away she wa'n't visible to the
naked eye. Bradbury--who'd got better remarkable sudden--was pawin' at
Jonadab's arm, tryin' to make him ease up; but he might as well have
pawed the wind. As for Henrietta Bassett, she was acrost the back of the
front seat tootin' the horn for all she was wuth. And curled down in a
heap on the cockpit floor was a fleshy, sea-farin' person by the name of
Barzilla Wingate, sufferin' from chills and fever.

"I think 'twas on the long stretch of the Trumet road that we beat
Tobias. I know we passed somethin' then, though just what I ain't
competent to testify. All I'm sure of is that, t'other side of Bayport
village, the landscape got some less streaked and you could most
gen'rally separate one house from the next.

"Bradbury looked at Henrietta and smiled, a sort of sickly smile. She
was pretty pale, but she managed to smile back. I got up off the floor
and slumped on the cushions. As for Cap'n Jonadab Wixon, he'd stopped
yellin', but his face was one broad, serene grin. His mouth, through
the dust and the dirt caked around it, looked like a rain gully in a
sand-bank. And, occasional, he crowed, hoarse but vainglorious.

"'Did you see me?' he barked. 'Did you notice me lick him? He'll laugh
at me, will he?--him and his one-horse tin cart! Ho! HO! Why, you'd
think he was settin' down to rest! I've got him where I want him now!
Ho, ho! Say, Henrietta, did you go swift as you--? Land sakes! Mr.
Bradbury, I forgot all about you. And I--I guess we must have got a good
ways past the doctor's place.'

"Bradbury said never mind. He felt much better, and he cal'lated he'd do
till we fetched the Old Home dock. He'd take the wheel, now, he guessed.

"But, would you b'lieve it, that fool Jonadab wouldn't let him! He was
used to the ship now, he said, and, if 'twas all the same to Henry G.
and Hettie, he'd kind of like to run her into port.

"'She answers her hellum fine,' he says. 'After a little practice I
cal'late I could steer--'

"'Steer!' sings out Bradbury. 'STEER! Great Caesar's ghost! I give you
my word, Cap'n Wixon, I never saw such handlin' of a machine as you did
goin' through Bayport, in my life. You're a wonder!'

"'U