abated its haste. Denry could now plainly see, in the radiance of a
gas-lamp, the gates of the wharf, and on them the painted letters:--

SHROPSHIRE UNION CANAL COY., LTD..

GENERAL CARRIERS.

_No Admittance except on Business_

He was heading straight for those gates, and the pantechnicon evidently
had business within. It jolted over the iron guard of the
weighing-machine, and this jolt deflected it, so that instead of aiming
at the gates it aimed for part of a gate and part of a brick pillar.
Denry ground his teeth together and clung to his seat. The gate might
have been paper, and the brick pillar a cardboard pillar. The
pantechnicon went through them as a sword will go through a ghost, and
Denry was still alive. The remainder of the journey was brief and
violent, owing partly to a number of bags of cement, and partly to the
propinquity of the canal basin. The pantechnicon jumped into the canal
like a mastodon, and drank.

Denry, clinging to the woodwork, was submerged for a moment, but, by
standing on the narrow platform from which sprouted the splintered ends
of the shafts, he could get his waist clear of the water. He was not a
swimmer.

All was still and dark, save for the faint stream of starlight on the
broad bosom of the canal basin. The pantechnicon had encountered nobody
whatever _en route_. Of its strange escapade Denry had been the
sole witness.