Three Speeds Forward
wonders with the spark. But hill number two killed us before we had much more than started, and so I locked my brake and got out to cool. There was no sense in burning up the transmission, and this was plainly a case of making haste slowly. There was such a smell of fried engine, and such an irritable bubbling in the radiator, that to force matters would be to stick the pistons. Autoists are often accused of having no time to admire the scenery they pass through, but I think, what with our breakdowns and our enforced stoppages for adjustments, it would be found that we've absorbed more scenery than most of the horse people. The landscape of a place where you have once been stuck lives with you for years afterwards, and is absolutely ineffaceable. I can see that road now, with Olaff rolling out his tongue, and the stream tinkling at the bottom of the canyon, and every one of the hundred thousand million trees.
Well, after about twenty minutes of scenery, we started to back up some more, and backed
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