I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened—­I suppose because there were two of us.  “Why shouldn’t we go out?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“They’ll see us.”

“Not they.  Goodness, no!  Why, we shall be going a thousand times faster than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done.  Come along!  Which way shall we go?  Window, or door?”

And out by the window we went.

Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, or imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raid I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of the New Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all.  We went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic.  The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—­who was just beginning to yawn—­were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still.  And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man’s throat.  And as parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people!  The effect as we walked about the thing began by being madly queer and ended by being—­disagreeable.  There they were, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture.  A girl and a man smiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to last for evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on the rail and stared at Gibberne’s house with the unwinking stare of eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure of wax, and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingers towards his loosened hat.  We stared at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came upon us, and we turned away and walked round in front of the cyclist towards the Leas.

“Goodness!” cried Gibberne, suddenly; “look there!”

He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid snail—­was a bee.

And so we came out upon the Leas.  There the thing seemed madder than ever.  The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of some monstrous clock.  Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading upon the grass.  I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sank to earth.  “Lord, look here!” cried Gibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent person in white faint—­striped flannels, white shoes, and