THE CRUISE OF THE GYRO-CAR
HERBERT STRANG’S ROMANCES
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
KING OF THE AIR: or, To Morocco on an Airship
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SWIFT AND SURE: the Story of a Hydroplane
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JACK HARDY: a Story of the Smuggling Days
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HENRY FROWDE AND HODDER & STOUGHTON
[Illustration: THE NEW AND THE OLD]
THE CRUISE OF
THE GYRO-CAR
BY
HERBERT STRANG
_ILLUSTRATED BY A. C. MICHAEL_
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
1911
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE
PREFACE
Albania, once a Roman highway to the East, has been for many centuries
the wildest and most inhospitable of European countries. The mountains
that had echoed to the tramp of Roman legions, and had witnessed the
culmination of the struggle between Cæsar and Pompey, became some
fifteen centuries later the scene of one of the most glorious struggles
for liberty of which we have record. For nearly a quarter of a century
Scanderbeg, the national hero of Albania, with a few thousands of his
mountaineers, stemmed the advancing tide of Turkish conquest. When
at length the gallant Prince and his people were borne down by sheer
weight of numbers, and Albania became a Turkish province, this mountain
land, which had been a principal bulwark of Christendom against Islam,
served to buttress the unstable empire of her new masters. It has been
the settled policy of the Turk to keep the Albanian in a condition of
semi-independence and complete barbarism, as a kind of savage watchdog
at the gate. From time to time the dog has turned upon his master, and
in many a fierce struggle the mountaineer has shown that he has not
lost the fine qualities of courage and love of liberty that inspired
Scanderbeg and his followers.
To the few Europeans, including J. G. von Hahn, Edward Lear, H. A.
Brown, and E. F. Knight, who at no little personal risk have made
a study of this romantic land and people, I am indebted for many
interesting particulars, and especially to Miss M. E. Durham for the
stories of “The Man and the Ass,” and the “Dismembered Cow.” The
opening up of the country under the new régime in Turkey may soon
render the visit of a motor- or gyro-car not more perilous there than
in other parts of Europe, at present of better repute. But it will be
long before the Via Egnatia, once the eastward continuation of the
Appian Way, becomes as good a highway for motor or other traffic as it
was two thousand years ago.
My young friend, George Buckland, is at present the sole possessor of
a gyro-car, and he looks forward somewhat ruefully to the day when his
scamper across Europe will no longer have the charm of novelty.
HERBERT STRANG.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCES THE GYRO-CAR 11
CHAPTER II
UNWELCOME ATTENTIONS 26
CHAPTER III
THE YELLOW CAR 45
CHAPTER IV
RUNNING THE PLANK 63
CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE ALPS 76
CHAPTER VI
A NARROW MARGIN 91
CHAPTER VII
AN ACT OF WAR 103
CHAPTER VIII
A ROMAN ROAD 115
CHAPTER IX
THE HONOUR OF AN ALBANIAN 129
CHAPTER X
SOME RIDDLES AND A NURSERY RHYME 142
CHAPTER XI
IN THE SMALL HOURS 154
CHAPTER XII
THE SWAMP 164
CHAPTER XIII
A LANDSLIP IN THE HILLS 177
CHAPTER XIV
A RUSH THROUGH THE RAPIDS 188
CHAPTER XV
THE END OF THE CRUISE 207
CHAPTER XVI
RECONCILIATION AND REWARDS 231
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE NEW AND THE OLD (_frontispiece_): _see page_ 14
A DESPERATE EXPEDIENT 73
A TENSE MOMENT 156
THE RAPIDS OF THE BLACK DRIN 199
MAP OF THE ROUTE OF THE GYRO-CAR, _to face page_ 11
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF THE GYRO-CAR]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCES THE GYRO-CAR
Among the passengers who alighted from the train at the terminus of
Shepperton, the little village near the Thames, one evening in early
summer, was a young man differing noticeably, but in a way not easy to
define, from all the rest. He was tall, but so were many; dark, but
most men are dark; bronzed, but the young men who spent idle hours in
sculling or punting on the river were as suntanned as he. Nor was it
anything in his attire that marked him out from his fellow-men, unless,
perhaps, that he was a trifle “smarter” than they. Yet many eyes had
been attracted to him as he walked down the platform at Waterloo,
and many followed him, at Shepperton station, as he stepped out of
the compartment and doffed his soft hat to a young girl, who stood
evidently awaiting him, and whose face lit up at his approach.
“Hullo, kid!” he said, in the young Briton’s casual manner of greeting.
“Where’s George?”
“He’ll be here in a minute or two,” replied the girl. “I _am_ glad to
see you, Maurice.”
“Thanks. How’s Aunt?”
“The same as ever,” said the girl with a smile. “Have you brought your
luggage?”
“Just a valise. The porter has it. Take it to that fly, will you?” he
added, as the man came up.
“Oh! Wait a minute,” said his sister, laying a hand on his arm. “George
will be here in a minute.”
“That means ten, unless George has reformed. Well, well, children must
be humoured.”
Brother and sister stood side by side chatting. The porter set the
valise down by the fence. We may take advantage of the delay to explain
that Maurice Buckland was one of the secretaries of the British agency
at Sofia, and had come home on short leave. It was nearly two years
since he was last in England. Affairs in the Balkans had been in a very
ticklish condition, the focus of interest to all the chancelleries of
Europe. A grave crisis had just been settled peaceably after a long
diplomatic game of Puss in the Corner, and Buckland was at last free to
take his well-earned holiday.
He showed an impatience far from diplomatic as the minutes flew by, and
his younger brother George did not appear.
“Really, Sheila----” he began after five minutes.
“Please, a little longer,” interrupted his sister. “George has a
surprise for you.”
“Has he, indeed! The greatest surprise would have been to find him
punctual. What is he cracking his wits on now?”
“I mustn’t tell you. I wish he would come.”
They stood at the gate. A hungry flyman touched his hat. The porter was
distracted between keeping one eye on the valise, the other on an old
lady who seemed determined to enter the train before it had shunted to
the up-platform.
Five more minutes passed.
“His surprise can keep,” said Maurice. “Porter!”
The man shouldered the valise and carried it to the waiting fly.
Buckland and his sister entered the vehicle, the driver shut the door,
touched his hat, clambered to his seat, and drove off. He knew the
address; for the past year The Acacias, on the Chertsey Road, had
been occupied by the Hon. Mrs. Courtenay-Greene, a middle-aged widow
who kept house for her orphan nephew and niece. The fly rattled along
through the village.
About half a mile from the station, as every one knows, the road sweeps
round in a sharp curve to the right. To the left, at right-angles with
it, stands the Anchor Hotel, with the vicarage adjacent and the old
ivy-clad church beyond. Just as the fly reached the curve, there was a
warning hoot from the opposite direction, and Buckland, glancing past
the driver, saw a motor-car of unusual shape rushing towards them
at the speed of an express train. With great presence of mind, and
a violent execration, the flyman whipped up his horse and pulled it
sharply to the near side towards the little post-office. Quick as he
was, he could not prevent an accident. The motor-car, indeed, did not
cut the horse and vehicle in two, as had seemed imminent, but merely
grazed the off hind-wheel. Its occupant let forth a shout; the flyman
had much ado to prevent his horse from bolting; and the motor-car,
swerving from the shock, and wrenched round by its driver, dashed
across the road, into the brick wall that bounds the curve, and fell
with a crash.
“Oh! He’s killed!” cried Sheila, rising to spring from the fly.
“Sit still,” said her brother sternly, holding her down. “Pull up,
driver.”
“Easier said nor done,” growled the man, “with the hoss scared out of
its wits.”
But in a few seconds he had the horse in hand, and pulled up a few
yards down the road. Buckland then helped his sister out, and rushed to
see what had become of his unfortunate brother. The landlord, ostler,
and boots of the Anchor were already on the spot; the proprietor of the
Old King’s Head opposite was running to join his rival; and as Buckland
came up, the vicar hastened out of his gate in his shirt-sleeves.
The late occupant of the car, a young fellow of eighteen or
thereabouts, turned from contemplating his battered machine to greet
his brother.
“Hullo, old man!” he said. “Here’s a pretty mess!”
“H’m! No bones broken, then. Is this your surprise?” said the elder
brother in his best ironical manner.
“More or less,” replied George with a rueful grin. “Why didn’t you wait
for me?”
“It appears that by not doing so I narrowly escaped extinction.”
“She’s a beauty, really, you know--or was,” said George.
“I notice a beautiful hole in the wall. But come, we are being stared
at by the whole population. What are you going to do with this
beautiful machine of yours?”
“I shall have to put her into garage for to-night, and get her to my
workshop for repairs to-morrow. The front wheel is buckled; it’s a
wonder the whole thing isn’t smashed. If you had only waited, instead
of taking a wretched old fly, we should have been safe home by this
time.”
“Meanwhile the fly is waiting. I will leave you to make your
arrangements, and may I beg you to be expeditious.”
Maurice Buckland affected at times a formal mode of speech that his
brother, fresh from Winchester, found very galling.
Maurice returned to the fly with his sister, ignoring the crowd which
had by this time gathered about the car. Having seen this wheeled by
a score of helpers into the garage attached to the Old King’s Head,
George rejoined the others, and the homeward journey was resumed.
“Just my luck!” said George. “I was going to drive you home in fine
style. That’s my new gyro-car.”
“Indeed!”
“It goes like winking.”
“So I saw,” said Maurice dryly.
“Yes; my own idea, you know--that is, it’s an adaptation of Louis
Brennan’s mono-rail car. You saw it has four wheels tandem; it’s like a
motor bicycle. You’ve heard of the gyroscope, of course?”
“I am not aware that I have.”
“Goodness! Is Sofia such a dead-alive place as that? I’ll show you how
it works to-morrow.”
“Spare me! I have seen how it plays the dickens with time-honoured
means of locomotion.”
“But, you know, it’s a splendid----”
“So are you, dear boy, but if you’ll allow me to say so, it was quite
time I came home. As your guardian, I must really exercise a little
restraint upon your exuberance. Your allowance is clearly far too big,
if you are squandering it in devising means for the slaughter of your
innocent fellow creatures.”
George felt somewhat resentful of his brother’s superior attitude, and
held his peace for a minute or two. But his enthusiasm soon got the
better of him, and he began again.
“It’s perfectly stunning, Maurice, the way she goes: isn’t it, Sheila?”
“Yes; it really is, Maurice,” said the girl eagerly. “We have had some
splendid rides.”
“Do I understand that you are so dead to all decency of feeling as to
endanger your only sister’s life as well as your own?” said Maurice
severely.
“There’s no risk at all,” replied George; “that is, no more than in
an ordinary motor. It was simply a piece of rotten bad luck. The
gyroscopes are all right, but there’s a terrific amount of side thrust
in turning a corner, and they’ve watered the road recently, so that in
making allowance for the possibility of skidding----”
“Pray don’t treat me to a lecture on mechanics. The accident, as I
conceive it, was the fault of your making an ass of yourself.”
“Here we are,” said Sheila, before George could answer, as the fly drew
up at the gate of a large house. “We’ve got a lovely lawn, Maurice; I
hope you’ve brought your tennis racquet.”
“My dear child, we have left the dark ages behind,” replied her brother
acidly, and the two others, as they followed him into the house, felt
that Maurice was even more insufferable than when he first put on high
collars.
This impression was deepened at the dinner-table. The Honourable Mrs.
Courtenay-Greene was a dowager of severe and wintry aspect, who wore
pince-nez and had the habit of “looking down her nose,” as George
irreverently put it. During dinner she and Maurice exchanged notes
about common acquaintances, ignoring George until a chance mention
of the gyro-car drew upon him a battery of satire, reproof, and
condemnation.
“I shudder for our reputation,” said the lady. “We are already, I am
sure, the talk of the neighbourhood.”
“Judging by what I have seen,” said Maurice, “we shall be lucky if we
are not more than the talk. It will be manslaughter, at the least.”
“And our name will be in the papers!” said Mrs. Courtenay-Greene. “I
live in a constant state of nervous terror. A motor accident on the
road is disgraceful enough, but George is actually talking of running
his ridiculous machine on the river.”
“Well, Aunt,” began George, but the lady closed her eyes and waved her
hands as though warding off something ineffably contaminating.
“I will not listen to your plausible impertinences,” she said.
“Maurice, shall we go and hear Tetrazzini to-morrow?”
George looked daggers at his aunt, and stole away as soon as dinner was
finished, to talk over his grievances with Sheila.
Next day, he went early into the village, and returned in an hour or
two, sitting on a lorry next to the driver, the damaged car behind him.
It was taken to his workshop at the foot of the garden. Maurice was
walking on the lawn, smoking a cigarette. He did not so much as lift
his eyes as the vehicle passed, and George turned his head aside: the
brothers might have been strangers.
For several days George was hardly to be seen. He had ordered a new
front wheel and fork from the maker, and until they arrived forbore
to speak of the gyro-car, and occupied himself in repairing the
wind-screen in front, and in working at various mechanical models with
which he was experimenting. He was going up to Cambridge in October,
and the science master at his school foretold that he would take a
first-class in the engineering tripos, if he would only concentrate
himself and not dabble in things outside the curriculum.
The new parts arrived. On the next day Maurice was strolling past the
workshop, which he had never yet deigned to enter, when his attention
was arrested by the sight of his brother’s car standing by itself on
the path. A faint humming proceeded from its interior. George was not
to be seen. In spite of himself, Maurice found himself gazing at the
machine with interest, for, though it had four wheels tandem, and was
not supported on either side, it stood perfectly upright. He glanced
round furtively to make sure that his brother was not watching, and
then walked round the car, stooping at every few paces to look beneath
it and assure himself that he was not mistaken. There were no supports;
the machine was actually balancing itself on its four wheels.
“Rummy!” he murmured. “How’s it done?”
He was peeping over the side of the car, when George’s voice hailed him
heartily.
“Hallo, Maurice! Isn’t she a beauty?”
Instantly he moved away, and began to stroll down the path as if
nothing could be less worthy of his attention.
“Swank!” said George to himself.
He turned the starting-handle, mounted into the car, depressed the
clutch-pedal, and having advanced the speed-lever a little, ran up the
path, out at the front gate, and disappeared.
Maurice flung his cigarette away, looking a trifle disconcerted. He
went to his room opening on to the road, and remained at the window
until he heard the hum of the car returning. Then he slipped into the
garden, and was sauntering up and down, when George ran the machine
down the path to its garage.
“I’ve had a jolly spin,” said George. “Nearly ran into a foreign fellow
in the village: there appears to be a little colony of foreigners
there: come to try boating, I suppose.”
He sprang out of the car, causing it to set up a slight rocking motion,
and went into his workshop. Maurice stood at a distance of a few yards,
contemplating what was to him an embodied mystery.
The machine was several feet longer than an ordinary motor-car, but
about half as wide, and shaped like a boat. Indeed, its general
appearance was that of a motor-cycle which had broken through the
bottom of a rowing boat. Abaft amidships there was a seat for two
persons, arranged pannier fashion, and sunk somewhat below the top of
the framework on which it rested. A little to the rear of the seat was
a glass chamber, in which were two top-like things, connected by a bar.
It was, apparently, from these that the humming proceeded, but they
were not visibly rotating, though they swayed slightly. In front was
the casing, presumably covering the motor; behind was a similar object,
but smaller.
George came out of the workshop.
“Hallo!” he said, as if recognising his brother for the first time.
“Taking a squint?”
“What are those things?” asked Maurice, nodding towards the glass case.
“Those? Oh, they’re the gyroscopes.”
He got into the car, and let down, one on each side, two supports,
each with a small wheel at the end. Then he moved a lever to stop the
spinning of the gyroscopes, got out again, lifted the cover of the
motor, and proceeded to oil the engine. For some time not a word was
spoken. Then Maurice broke the silence.
“Er! H’m! What, may I ask, is a gyroscope?”
“A top.”
“H’m! Do you think you could manage to speak in words of more than one
syllable?”
“Well, gyroscope has three.”
“Undoubtedly. I am still a little doubtful as to the accuracy of
your definition, or perhaps I should say, of the perfectness of my
apprehension. Will you condescend to be lucid?”
“Oh, you want to be treated to a lecture in mechanics, do you? Are you
sure it won’t hurt you? Aren’t you afraid of your name getting into the
papers?”
Maurice opened his cigarette-case and offered it to his brother.
“Thanks, old man,” said George, contritely. “Got a light?”
Maurice struck a match, replaced the box in his pocket with
deliberation, and said:
“George, old boy, what _is_ a gyroscope?”
“Well, old man, it’s a sort of top, as you see. They’re stopping: it
takes some time when they’re going at 5,000 a minute. You can see ’m
spinning now. They’re in a vacuum, to get rid of air resistance and
skin friction, and so you get a high velocity with a minimum of power.”
“That is not beyond my intelligence. Proceed with your lecture, and, if
I may make a suggestion, begin with the use of this--gyroscope, I think
you said.”
“It’s to keep the machine steady--balance it, you know.”
“I saw that it remained upright when stationary. That is very
remarkable.”
“But that’s not all. Having two, I can take the sharpest corners with
the greatest ease. I set them spinning in opposite directions, and they
are so linked that as one sways to one side, the other sways to the
other, so that the car doesn’t topple in turning a corner.”
“The machine apparently goes like a bicycle, with this difference, that
you can stop dead without tumbling?”
“Yes, but it’s better than a bicycle. A cyclist has to keep his machine
upright: the gyroscopes do that, and you can give your whole attention
to steering. The wheels being tandem, too, I can use ball-bearings.
I’ve got a petrol motor that actuates a dynamo, and so avoid the
necessity of altering the gear going up-hill, and the noise it makes.”
In his enthusiasm he had forgotten his brother’s former aloofness, and
was now bent on instructing him. He proceeded with a piece of stick to
draw a diagram on the gravel in illustration of the scientific details
he gave.
Maurice listened and looked patiently, but at the end of five minutes’
technical explanation he yawned and said:
“Ah! Very interesting, but quite beyond me. In other respects the thing
is an ordinary motor-car?”
“Yes, but as much faster as a bicycle is faster than a tricycle. I can
go faster than a four-wheeled motor of double the horsepower.”
“A doubtful advantage. The temptation to exceed the speed limit must be
rather distressing.”
“Besides, being so much narrower, it can go where a motor cannot.”
“That would certainly be an advantage in a tight place, but I presume
they don’t allow you to run on the pavement? By the bye,” continued
Maurice, “I see that your gyro-car, as you call it, has no doors, and
you have to vault over the side in getting in and out. That strikes me
as being somewhat of an inconvenience, and an unnecessary one, to boot.”
“Not a bit of it. The car is built so low that it doesn’t matter.
Besides, it’s an amphibious animal, old man; any sort of opening in the
sides would hardly tend to increase its sea-worthiness.”
“You don’t mean to say that the thing goes in the water too?” said
Maurice, genuinely surprised.
“Aha! I thought I’d surprise you. I tell you what, Maurice, we’ll go
for a spin this afternoon, and I’ll show you how it goes, both on land
and water: that is, if you’re not afraid to trust your precious skin to
me.”
“My dear boy, I have made my will. Let us wait and see the condition of
my pulse after luncheon.”