chauffeur met them at the bottom of the stairs. He clapped his hands
together and informed them cheerily that he had been waiting for four
hours. It was the bitterest winter in these parts within the memory of
man, said he, and he himself had not seen snow there for five years.
Then he settled the three travellers in the great roomy touring car
covered with a Cape-cart hood, wrapped them up in many rugs and started.

After a few moments, the huddling together of their bodies--for, the
Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back
seat--the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood,
induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were
being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their
limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They
felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which,
after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor
Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Doyne twisted the
stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight
it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world
to right and left and in front of the talc windows still darker.
McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord Doyne chewed the end of
his cigar. The car sped on through an unseen wilderness.

Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound,
and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been struck
by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown
sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade
screamed. McCurdie cursed. Doyne scrambled from the confusion of rugs
and limbs and, tearing open the side of the Cape-cart hood, jumped out.
The chauffeur had also just leaped from his seat. It was pitch dark save
for the great shaft of light down the snowy road cast by the acetylene