Seeing that Dane stuck like grim death to his determination and his steering-wheel, Sir Samuel shut the window and devoted himself to calming his wife who, I imagine, threatened to tear open the door and jump out.  The important thing was that he kept her from doing it, perhaps by bribes of gold and precious stones, and the Aigle moved on, writhing like a wounded snake as she obeyed the hand on the wheel.  If the slightest thing should go wrong in the steering-gear, as we read of in other motor-cars each time we picked up a newspaper—­but other cars were not in charge of Mr. Jack Dane.  I felt sure, somehow, that nothing would ever go wrong with a steering-gear of whose destiny he was master.

Not a word did he speak to me, yet I felt that my silence of tongue and stillness of body was approved of by him.  He had said that we would be “out of this before long,” so I believed we would; but suddenly my eyes told me that something worse than we had won through was in store for us ahead.

CHAPTER XXI

All this time we’d been struggling up hill, but abruptly we came to the top of the ascent, and had to go sliding down, along the same shelf, which now seemed narrower than before.  Looking ahead, it appeared to have been bitten off round the edge here and there, just at the stiffest zigs and zags of the nightmare road.  And far down the mountain the way went winding under our eyes, like the loops of a lasso; short, jerky loops, as we came to each new turn, to which the length of our chassis forced us to bow and curtsey on our slippery, sliding skates.  Forward the Aigle had to go until her bonnet hung over the precipice, then to be cautiously backed for a foot or two, before she could glide ticklishly down the next steep gradient.

Involuntarily I shrank back against the cushions, bit my lip, and had to force myself not to catch at the arm of the seat in those giddy seconds when it felt as if we were dropping from sky to earth in a leaky balloon; but if the blood in your veins has been put there by decent ancestors who trail gloriously in a long line behind you, I suppose it’s easier for you not to be a coward than it is for people like the Turnours, who have to be their own ancestors, or buy them at auctions.

The first words my companion spoke to me came as the valley below us narrowed.  “Look there,” he said, nodding; and my gaze followed the indication, to light joyously upon a distant col, where clustered a friendly little group of human habitations.

The sight was like a signal to relax muscles, for though there was a long stretch still of the appalling road between us and the col, the eye seemed to grasp safety, and cling to it.

“Beyond that col we shall strike the route nationale, which we missed by coming this way,” said Mr. Dane; and then it was the motor only which gave voice, until we were close to the oasis in our long desert of danger.  That comforting voice was like a song of triumph as the Aigle paused to rest at last before a gendarmerie and a rough, mountain inn.  Some men who had been standing in front of the buildings gave us a hearty cheer as we drew up at the door, and grinned a pleasant welcome.