Martians was nothing compared with me. I was moting towards Leatherhead,
where my cousin lived, when the streak of light caused by the Third
Crinoline curdled the paraffin tank. Vain was it to throw water on the
troubled oil; the mischief was done. Meanwhile a storm broke. The
lightning flashed, the rain beat against my face, the night was
exceptionally dark, and to add to my difficulties the motor took the
wick between its teeth and fairly bolted.

No one who has never seen an automobile during a spasm of motor ataxy
can have any idea of what I suffered. I held the middle of the way for a
few yards, but just opposite Uxbridge Road Station I turned the wheel
hard a-port, and the motor car overturned. Two men sprang from nowhere,
as men will, and sat on its occiput, while I crawled into Uxbridge Road
Station and painfully descended the stairs.

I found the platform empty save for a colony of sturdy little newsboys,
whose stalwart determination to live filled me with admiration, which I
was enjoying until a curious sibillation beneath the bookstall stirred
me with panic.

Suddenly, from under a bundle of _British Weeklies_, there emerged a
head, and gradually a man crawled out. It was the Artilleryman.

"I'm burning hot," he said; "it's a touch of--what is it?--erethism."

His voice was hoarse, and his Remarks, like the Man of Kent's, were
Rambling.

"Where do you come from?" he said.