It seemed to me that Miss Elson uttered a cry and raised her hand to her breast, and then I saw her no more all that day. The roses gradually shed their petals, owing to the vibration, and flew off, singly or by threes and fours; the varnished wood of the sleeping car reappeared, immaculate, reflecting more clearly than any mirror the ugly profile of Bob Rumble.

The following day the rosy inflorescence was renewed. I wondered whether I was going mad, and Miss Elson’s anxious face thenceforth never left the window.

But a more serious incident engaged my attention.

On that morning of the third day a terrible thing occurred; terrible, especially, because it could have cost us the race. Jewey Jacobs, in the seat immediately in front of me, his knees a yard away from my knees, connected by the aluminum rods – Jewey Jacobs, who had been working with fantastic vigor from the very start, so much so that the strength of his pedaling could have thrust our machine forward faster than our schedule permitted, so that I had on several occasions had to pedal against him – Jewey Jacobs suddenly seemed to take a perverse pleasure in straightening his legs in return, pushing my knees up disagreeably against my chin, and forcing me to get down to some serious leg-work.

Neither Corporal Gilbey nor, behind him, Sammy White nor George Webb were able to turn around in their masks and harnesses to see what had got into Jewey Jacobs, but I could bend over sufficiently to catch a glimpse of his right leg; his foot was still thrust into the leather toe-clip and was still moving regularly up and down, but the ankle seemed to have become numb and the ankle-play had ceased. Moreover, and perhaps this is too much of a technicality, I had not taken sufficient notice of a peculiar odor, which I had attributed to his black jersey shorts where, like the rest of us, he satisfied both his needs into some fuller’s earth. But a sudden idea made me shudder, and I looked again at the heavy, marble ankle which was within a yard of my leg, and linked to it, and I breathed in the cadaverous odor of an incomprehensibly rapid decomposition.

Half a yard off to my right, another sort of change struck me: instead of the middle of the tender, I saw opposite me the second door of the first car.

‘We’re seizing up!” cried George Webb at that instant.

“We’re seizing up!” repeated Sammy White and George Webb; and, as a mental shock weakens the limbs more than physical fatigue, the last door of the second car appeared by my shoulder, the last flowering door of the second and last car. The voices of Arthur Gough and his crew rose in a cheer.

“Jewey Jacobs is dead,” I cried, woefully, with all my strength.