Every faculty of body and brain was concentrated on first keeping the monster out of the ditch on the off side, then the ditch on the near.  My eyes expanded until they must have filled my goggles.  We waltzed, we wavered, we shied, until we outdid the Seine in the windings of its channel.

I fully expected that Winston would pluck me like a noxious weed from the driver’s seat where I had taken root, and snatch the helm himself; but strange to relate, I remained unmolested.  Jack confined his interference to an occasional “Whoa,” or “Steady, old boy”; while in the tonneau so profound a silence reigned that, if I had had time to think of anything, I should have supposed Molly to be swooning.

“Why don’t you curse me, and put me out of my misery?” I gasped, when I had by a miracle avoided a tree as large as a house, which I had seen deliberately step out of its proper place to get in my way.

“‘Curse you,’ my dear fellow?  You’re doing splendidly,” said Jack.  “You deserve praise, not blows.  I did a lot worse when I began.”

Thus encouraged, I gained confidence in myself and the machine.  Almost at once, I was conscious of improvement in mastering the touch of the wheel.  Soon, I was imitating a straight line with fair success, subject to a few graceful deviations.  I realised that, after all, we were not going very fast, though my sensation at starting had been that of hanging on to a streak of greased lightning.

I began to sigh for more worlds to conquer, and when Jack reminded me that we were on the first speed, I pronounced myself equal to an experiment with the second.  He made me practice taking one hand from the wheel, looking about me a little, and trying to keep the car straight by feeling rather than sight.  When I had accomplished these feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request.  He told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of myself did, whenever the master was within an ace of losing his head.  I pressed down the clutch-pedal, pulled the lever affectionately towards me, and very gradually opened the throttle, so as not to startle it.  In spite of my caution, however, I thought for an instant we were really going to get on the other side of the horizon, which had been avoiding us for so long.  We shot ahead alarmingly, but to my intense relief, as well as surprise, I found that Jack had not exaggerated.  It was easier to steer on the second speed than on the first.  I had merely to tickle the wheel with my finger, to send us gliding, swanlike, this way or that.  To be sure, I did well-nigh run over a chicken, but I would be prepared to argue with it till it was black in the face (or resort to litigation, if necessary) that the proper place for its blood would be on its own silly head, not mine.