"Punctured, by jingo!" he cried. "One of those confounded gorse-thorns must have jabbed itself into us as we rushed up the incline. Outside, chaps! Quick! Lift off the spare wheel and let's have it fixed. Those fellows behind there may be waking presently."
"Here it is, on this side--the front wheel!" cried the reciter. "All together, boys, and we'll have her on in a jiffy!"
The urgency of the occasion speeded their efforts, and soon they were ready for re-starting. But yet another bitter disappointment awaited them.
"Confound it, the old bus won't get a move on even now!" snarled the driver. "What in thunder's amiss with her?"
They stared at each other in blank dismay for a moment. Then out jumped the driver again, and his voice had a note of dread in it as he called out that the rear wheel was punctured too.
"Impossible!" said the reciter, "an unheard-of thing!"
"See for yourself, idiot!" snapped the driver. "It's no thorn puncture, either. Somebody's shoved a knife into the tyre. Here's a hole--clean cut."
The other two made a rapid examination of the tyre and came to the same conclusion.
"But who the blazes could have done it?" queried the reciter. "Not those two sots behind us. I doped them too well; they're snoring still."
"The repair outfit, quick," the driver commanded. "Willy nilly, we've got to mend this tyre or foot it, and on Shanks' pony we may not be so lucky this time. Somebody--goodness knows who--is aware we are here, and has slashed us up. It's the car or nothing for us, now."
With feverish haste they applied every art of which they were capable to the repair of the tyre. But not all the mechanical skill in the world can perform miracles, and there is no royal road to tyre-mending. Minutes that were precious to the trio slipped by, and, though they encountered no set-back in their task, it nevertheless seemed an endless one. Therefore, their nerves had reached a pitch of high tension when the unmistakable sound of a swiftly-moving car caught their startled ears.
"What's this?" said the driver anxiously. "Who could need to be driving up here, and at dusk, too?"
"You're easily rattled, Dodger," sneered Cyrus the Poet. "Most probably it's the car of a local doctor, called out to some yokel with a stomach-ache."