"I hereby confound it!" said his companion with grim solemnity. "I'll do anything you like, provided you don't ask me to evacuate this luxurious cushion and push."

"Now if I had my chauffeur here----" began the General, then, realizing that his duty to his country had necessitated the release of the man for military service, he held his peace on that point, only to break out in another direction.

"It's that horrible concoction that is sold as petrol," he remarked with an air of profound wisdom. "Sixty per cent paraffin and ten per cent water. Nine o'clock in the evening, miles from anywhere, and the idiotic car as obstinate as a mule."

d.i.c.k's father, enjoying a hard-earned fortnight's leave after a strenuous time at the front, had performed what he would have considered a desperate task in pre-war days. He had actually driven his own motor--a twenty-horse-power touring-car--from Shropshire to Southampton.

Luck, in the shape of complete immunity from tyre troubles and the two thousand odd things that might go wrong with a car, had hitherto favoured him. Whereat he became conceited with his powers as a motorist; but it was pride before a fall, and Major-General Crosthwaite found himself stranded with his three companions somewhere in the vicinity of the little Wiltshire town of Malmesbury.

The eldest of the three pa.s.sengers was Admiral Trefusis Sefton, K.C.B.

(retired), whose son Jack was at that very moment engaged upon his desperate venture of bringing the crippled _Calder_ across the North Sea. Residing near Southampton, he had accepted Crosthwaite Senior's invitation to spend a long week-end at the latter's house near Bridgnorth, and the Major-General thought it was a good opportunity for having a motor-tour by fetching his guest from the south of England.

"I'll take young George with me," wrote the Major-General, "and there will be room in the car for Leslie. They can't get into worse mischief than if they were left at home, and one will be company for the other."

So George Crosthwaite accompanied his father from Bridgnorth to Southampton. Shrewdly the fifteen-year old lad suspected that the primary object of his sire was to let his son see what an expert driver Crosthwaite Senior had become.

Leslie Sefton, also aged fifteen, jumped at the invitation, and, in spite of various and oft-repeated warnings from his parent not to skylark, his exuberant spirits formed a sympathetic counterpart to those of young George Crosthwaite.

Declining his son's offer of expert advice and a.s.sistance, the general divested himself of his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, inserted his monocle in his eye, and spent four precious minutes in deep contemplation of the stationary car. Then he applied rudimentary tests to half a dozen different parts without locating the trouble, while the admiral placidly smoked a choice cigar and meditated upon the pleasing fact that he had never succ.u.mbed to the motor craze.

George and Leslie, seated on a bank by the roadside, were discussing the merits and demerits of various types of aeroplanes when the former's parent interrupted the pleasant discussion.

"George."

"Sir?"

"I want you to go into Malmesbury and get them to send a car to tow us in."

Young Crosthwaite, unlike either of the two sons in the parable, prepared to obey. "Obey orders at the double" had been dinned into his head from time immemorial. On one occasion when the colonel--as he was then--was entertaining a high War Office official, George, in his alacrity to carry out his parent's behests, collided with the portly butler bearing a heavily-laden tray. But the culprit's plea that he was fulfilling the oft-reiterated order calmed the colonel's inward wrath (he dared not "let himself go" just then) and earned a substantial tip from the highly-amused guest.

"Coming?" asked George laconically, addressing his chum.

"Rather," was the reply.

George threw his greatcoat into the car. As he did so, his sharp eyes caught sight of a tap that was turned off when it should have been turned on.

Deftly he depressed the little lever, and, somewhat to his parent's surprise, "tickled" the carburetter.

"It's no use doing that," said the discomfited motorist. "Hurry up and be off. We'll be stranded here all night if you don't bestir yourself."

Crosthwaite Senior's astonishment increased when the dutiful George climbed into the car and released the self-starter. The motor fired without a hitch.

"By Jove!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed George's parent, too delighted to think of thanking his son. "However did you manage it?"

"Only turned the petrol on," replied George calmly.

"Have you been playing any tricks----?" began the general, then resolved to repeat the question at a more favourable private opportunity. "Jump in, Sefton; we've wasted an hour already. Might have been in Gloucester by this time. 'Fraid we'd better put up in Malmesbury to-night."

On the lowest gear, the car crawled slowly up the stiff gradient leading to the little town, and pulled up outside an ivy-clad inn within a stone's throw of the imposing ruins of the abbey.

"Any news to-night, I wonder?" enquired the general as the four sat down to a substantial supper. "Suppose there's no chance of a late paper in this out-of-the-way spot?"

"'Fraid not," replied the admiral. "You see, it is on a branch line.

Decent weather, eh?"

"Not so bad for our men in the North Sea," remarked Crosthwaite complacently. "They've had a long, rotten winter, although d.i.c.k never complains on that score. Must be quite yachty weather, I should imagine," he added, with the memories of a certain pleasure cruise to the Baltic in June flashing across his mind.

He picked up a morning paper from a settee and glanced at it. He had read the selfsame news fourteen hours previously. Yet a paragraph had hitherto escaped his notice.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed.

"What's that?" enquired the admiral.

"Suppose, after all, it's nothing much," observed General Crosthwaite.

"Masters of neutral steamers arriving at Danish ports state that they sighted numerous wrecks and hundreds of floating corpses. Another Reuter yarn, I take it."

"More U-boat frightfulness perhaps," hazarded Admiral Sefton.

And yet the report was a mild form of paving the way towards the announcement of the Jutland battle. This was on Friday. Already Germany had claimed a glorious and colossal naval victory, and the tardiness of the British Government in giving the lie direct to the boastful Hunnish claims gave, at least temporarily, a severe shock to neutrals' belief in the invincibility of Britain's sea power. Already American pro-German papers had appeared with highly coloured accounts of Great Britain's crushing naval disaster; cartoons depicting John Bull's consternation at the return of the battered British lion with a badly twisted tail spoke volumes for the incontestable superiority of the German navy.

Happily ignorant of the disquieting rumours, and, indeed, of any knowledge of the naval action, the motorists slept soundly until eight on the following morning.

"Another fine day," declared Crosthwaite Senior at breakfast. "We ought to be home by three in the afternoon. Any papers yet?" he enquired of the waiter.

"No, sir, not until eleven," was the reply.

"Must wait until we get to Gloucester, I suppose," grunted the general.

"One of the penalties for stopping at a place on a branch line."

"A fine little place, Pater," remarked George. "Absolutely top-hole.

Wish we were staying here. There's an awfully decent stream down there--looks just the place for fishing."

"Can't beat the Severn for that, my boy," declared his father, loyal to his native town and the river that flows past its site. "Buck up, my boy, and finish the packing. I want to see that that petrol-tank is properly filled--no unsealed cans, remember."

George Crosthwaite was really a useful a.s.sistant to his parent.

Crosthwaite Senior frankly recognized the fact, but forbore from giving his son, personally, due credit, avowing that it was bad for discipline to be lavish with praise.

"Smart youngster, Sefton, my boy," he declared in proud confidence to the admiral. "He has his head screwed on the right way, although I suppose I ought not to brag about it. Have to be careful, though, that he doesn't kick over the traces just yet."

It was nearly nine before the car was ready to resume its journey. In high spirits, for the bracing air and bright sunshine made a perfect day, the party set off.

Major-General Crosthwaite started at a strictly moderate pace. He invariably did; but it was always noticeable that, before he had covered many miles, he accelerated the speed until it reached a reckless pace bordering on fifty miles an hour. Towards the end of his day's journey, he would develop a speed that caused his sedate pa.s.sengers to quake with apprehension, and his youthful ones to revel in the terrific rush through the air.

Twenty minutes after leaving Malmesbury the car, now running splendidly, bounded up the steep ascent into old-world Tetbury. Here, taking a wrong turning, the motorists had to retrace their way, Crosthwaite Senior slowing down in order to avoid a similar mistake.

Presently Leslie caught sight of a placard displayed outside a news-agent's shop. In flaring red letters were the words: "Big Naval Action in the North Sea".

Leaning over the seat he gripped his father's arm. By this time the car was well beyond the shop.

"What's wrong?" bawled the admiral, for the wind-screen had been lowered and the breeze was whistling past his ears.