The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our natural
anxiety about ourselves (our clothe's were still dreadfully hot,
and the fronts of the thighs of Gibberne's white trousers were
scorched a drabbish brown), prevented the minute observations
I should have liked to make on all these things. Indeed, I really
made no observations of any scientific value on that return. The bee,
of course, had gone. I looked for that cyclist, but he was already
out of sight as we came into the Upper Sandgate Road or hidden
from us by traffic; the char-a-banc, however, with its people now
all alive and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pace
almost abreast of the nearer church.

We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had stepped
in getting out of the house was slightly singed, and that the
impressions of our feet on the gravel of the path were unusually deep.

So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practically
we had been running about and saying and doing all sorts of things
in the space of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hour
while the band had played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect it
had upon us was that the whole world had stopped for our convenient
inspection. Considering all things, and particularly considering our
rashness in venturing out of the house, the experience might certainly
have been much more disagreeable than it was. It showed, no doubt,
that Gibberne has still much to learn before his preparation is
a manageable convenience, but its practicability it certainly
demonstrated beyond all cavil.

Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use under