over the rough roads so violently that my companion could scarcely keep on his seat, and was constantly thrown against me, I was well contented, and laughed. The greater the speed the better it pleased me. But when they stopped, and plunged, and kicked with a violence quite beyond the man's power to control, I was anxious enough.
Then, quite suddenly, came an overwhelming disaster which ruined everything. We had ascended a steep hill at a slow pace, with more than one stoppage, and were descending a slope on the other side, when the horses bolted, and dashed away down it with a frantic fury that threatened to smash us up at almost every stride. The pace was mad enough to frighten a man whose nerves were in far better order than those of my fright-wrought prisoner, and his terror paralysed him.
There was going to be a smash; and I had scarcely time to realise the certainty of it, and to wonder vaguely how it would affect my escape, when it came. There were a few moments of mad, jolting, dizzying rush down the hill, then a fearful crash as the wheels struck against some heavy obstacle, a wild jerk that threw us both forward in a heap, a noise of smashing glass and rending woodwork, half-a-dozen great lurching bumps and jolts, and the carriage was on its side, dragging, and tearing, and grinding on the rough road, till it stopped, and I found myself lying in its ruins, with my hands and face badly cut and bruised, and every bone in my body, as it seemed, either broken or dislocated. I struggled out of the ruin as best I could, to find the driver and his horses in a heap in the road, the man himself in imminent peril of being kicked to death. I managed to haul him out of danger, and laid
