are like that—­often uncertain in their ultimate goal (for map-makers, like bicyclists, are apt to get tired of them, and, tiring, break them off, so to speak, in mid-air, leaving them suspended, like snapped ends of string).  But however uncertain their goal may be, their form is not uncertain at all; it can be relied on to be that of a snake in agony leaping down a hill or up; or, if one prefers it, that of a corkscrew plunging downwards into a cork.

Nan leaped and plunged with them.  She was at the bottom while the others were still jolting, painfully brake-held, albeit rapidly, half-way down.  And sometimes, when the slope was more than usually like the steep roof of a house, the zig-zags more than usually acute, the end even less than usually known, the whole situation, in short, more dreadful and perilous, if possible, than usual, the others surrendered, got off and walked.  They couldn’t really rely on their brakes to hold them, supposing something should swing round on them from behind one of the corners; they couldn’t be sure of turning with the road when it turned at its acutest, and such failure of harmony with one’s road is apt to meet with a dreadful retribution.  Barry was adventurous, and Kay and Gerda were calm, but to all of them life was sweet and limbs and bicycles precious; none of them desired an untimely end.

But Nan laughed at their prognostications of such an end.  “It will be found impossible to ride down these hills,” said their road book, and Nan laughed at that too.  You can, as she observed, ride down anything; it is riding up that is the difficulty.  Anyhow, she, who had ridden bucking horses and mountainous seas, could ride down anything that wore the semblance of a road.  Only fools, Nan believed, met with disasters while bicycling.  And jamming on the brakes was bad for the wheels and tiring to the hands.  So brakeless, she zig-zagged like greased lightning to the bottom.

It was on the second day, on the long hill that runs from Manaccan down to Helford Ferry, that Gerda suddenly took her brakes off and shot after her.  That hill is not a badly spiralling one, but it is long and steep and usually ridden with brakes.  And just above Helford village it has one very sharp turn to the left.

Nan, standing waiting for the others on the bridge, looked round and saw Gerda shooting with unrestrained wheels and composed face round the last bend.  She had nearly swerved over at the turn, but not quite.  She got off at the bridge.

“Hullo,” said Nan.  “Quicker than usual, weren’t you?” She had a half-grudging, half-ironic grin of appreciation for a fellow sportsman, the same grin with which she had looked up at her from the sea at Cadgwith.  Nan liked daring.  Though it was in her, and she knew that it was in her, to hate Gerda with a cold and deadly anger, the sportsman in her gave its tribute.  For what was nothing and a matter of ordinary routine to her, might be, she suspected, rather alarming to the quiet, white-faced child.