"Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times
faster than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Come
along! Which way shall we go? Window, or door?"

And out by the window we went.

Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had,
or imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little
raid I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence
of the New Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all.
We went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a minute
examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels
and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end
of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor--who was just
beginning to yawn--were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest
of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except
for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts
of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor,
and eleven people! The effect as we walked about the thing began
by being madly queer, and ended by being disagreeable. There they
were, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozen
in careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girl and a man
smiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to last
for evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on
the rail and stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stare
of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure of wax,
and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers
towards his loosened hat. We stared at them, we laughed at them,
we made faces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came upon
us, and we turned away and walked round in front of the cyclist