tools I had bought in Bern.

From where we lay hid behind our rock to Airolo was only some
thirty-two miles, and the car ate up distance with so voracious an
appetite, that it was clear we should arrive in the little Italian
town in the dead waste and middle of the night. To travel a forbidden
road on an automobile, and then to knock up a snoring innkeeper at one
in the morning, to ask him where we could find a donkey, seemed to be
straining unduly the sense of humour; so after consultation we decided
that we should leave Airolo to its slumbers and speed down the Pass
into Italy until we ran to earth the object of our quest.

[Illustration: "THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH".]

Molly had produced excellent coffee; the smoke of our cigarettes
mingled its perfume with the night air. Our position had in it
something unique, for while we were "in the heart of one of nature's
most savage retreats" (as said a guide-book of my boyhood), we were at
the same time enjoying the refinements of civilisation, and I
suggested to Winston that our bivouac would form a fit subject for a
picture labelled, in the manner of some Dutch masters, "Automobilists
Reposing."

By the time Gotteland had packed up everything, and we were seated
once more in the car, it was nearly eleven o'clock at night. Coming
out from the shelter of our rock, so fierce a blast of wind smote us
that Molly would, I think, have been carried off her feet had I not
given her a steadying arm. We had to cram our caps on our heads, or
the wind would have torn them from us, and the voice of the motor was
swallowed up in the shrieking of the tempest. Molly was evidently