Bulldozed

KEN MULLINER’S property stretches down the steep, eastern slope at the end of the Lane, and some distance out on to the flat below, but when he bought the place there was no access to this level area save by a narrow foot-track winding round the contours of the hill, and hemmed in by Stinking Roger eight feet high. Enriched by the slow wash of topsoil from above, watered by a spring, and sheltered by protruding ridges on either side, it was too good a bit of land to lie idle, and Ken’s neighbours were always urging him to do something about it. Once he did begin to put in an hour here and there making a road with pick and shovel, but he happened to mention it to Bruce before he had done more than about five yards; Bruce, having enquired how long this had taken him, went into a mathematical trance from which he presently emerged to inform Ken that, if he kept on working at the same rate, he might expect to get it finished in about thirteen years. Ken stared, and said : “Strewth, I don’t want a road that bad!”

The next summer, in one of his sporadic fits of industry, he cleared half an acre at the bottom, and planted tomatoes. There had never been tomatoes grown in the neighbourhood to equal them, but by the time Ken had trudged up that slope half a dozen times, lugging his harvest in kerosene tins, he lost interest—particularly since, having thus got it to the top of the hill, he sold it at the bottom of the market.

“What you want’s a flying-fox,” Aub told him.

“Got to have two to work those,” Ken objected. Aub shrugged.

“Okay, what you want’s first a wife, and then a flying-fox.”

“Look, mate,” said Ken, “if having a flying-fox means having a wife, I’ll leave the flaming land under lantana till kingdom come.”

And there the matter rested for a long time.

Then, a year or so ago, he won fifty pounds in the Casket. He gave the Lane a fine beer-party, but-—to everyone’s amazement—did not afterwards disappear for a spree in the city; instead, he announced his intention of hiring a bulldozer to make a road down his hill. Everyone deduced from this that he must be seriously contemplating matrimony at last; there seemed to be no other way of accounting for such a sober and responsible decision. Yet it was a long time, now, since Maud had visited the Lane, and a long time since Ken had left it; nor had she been writing to him. (Of course we are not vulgarly inquisitive about each other’s correspondence, but when you collect the mail you cannot help seeing the handwriting and postmarks on envelopes.) Moreover, we had only recently learned from Myra that Maud was all but engaged to a sports commentator. Aunt Isabelle immediately wrote to Mrs. Jackson to find out what girl Ken had been going around with in Rothwell lately, but Mrs. Jackson replied that, so far as she knew, there were just the usual half-dozen, so we all subsided into baffled curiosity.

Bill Brown at Rothwell has two bulldozers, and the one he sends up to do jobs in this neighbourhood is usually driven by a youth named Barry James. Bill came up and looked over the terrain critically when Ken summoned him to give a quote; he chewed a blade of grass, pondered a while, and said:

“Looks okay, Ken, but you never know when you might strike a band of rock.”

“Suppose you don’t?”

“Easy as falling off a log. Meat pie and a cuppa tea. But you might, see, so I couldn’t guarantee to do the job under a hundred quid.”

“That’s fifty more than I got.”

“H’m. How about I give you fifty quid’s worth, and we call it a deal?”

“Suits me.”

“Mind you, it might take her down to the bottom, or it mightn’t. Depends.”

“Well, give it a go, sport. I got nothing to lose.”

So Barry set to work one morning at eight o’clock.

Once youths took pride in being good horsemen, but nowadays they prefer something with an engine, and Barry loves his bulldozer as devotedly as that character in the poem loved his Arab steed. He has wonderful hands, too, and a wonderful seat, even when the thing is lurching down a steep hill on a sideways cant of forty degrees, and shoving the landscape in front of it. He likes to have a job in which he can demonstrate its speed and efficiency, so he fairly licked his lips when he saw Ken’s hill. He likes an audience, too, so he was pleased to see that Mrs. Jackson and her two boys, Len and Derek, were present. He was even more pleased when these lads told him they had spent two solid days pestering their mother to bring them, but he was not surprised because (having been thirteen himself only six years ago), he understood that the sight of something huge and powerful making so much mess in so short a time has an irresistible appeal for boys.

Presently Dick strolled across the road to watch for a while. He was closely followed by Aub (who lost no time in persuading him to take two to one against the job being finished that day), and hard upon their heels came Bruce Kennedy, accompanied by Marge. Bruce’s interest was, as ever, academic and statistical; having estimated the time required to complete the road by manual labour, he now wished to observe the bulldozer in operation, and make further calculations for comparison. As for Marge, she was there in the spirit of one who visits a gaol or a slum; such things are deplorable aspects of the civilised world, but the responsible citizen must look them in the face. For Marge—as she sadly acknowledges—was born a century too late. She feels that since human beings have never been really sure what they ought to do, and have usually guessed wrong, it was better in the days when they had to do it slowly and laboriously, because that did impose some slight check upon their enthusiastic blundering. She is therefore profoundly out of sympathy with machines—particularly ones which can devastate the face of nature with a speed formerly reserved to earthquakes.

Barry, as may be imagined, was gratified to find his gallery thus increased, and sprang lightly to his lofty perch; even the man from Snowy River can never have sprung to his saddle with so gallant and insouciant an air. His actions then became reminiscent of a pianist who, with eyes fixed upon the ceiling, runs his hands over the keys to establish a rapport with his instrument. Gazing at the sky, he pulled, pushed, pressed and turned various knobs, gears, switches and what have you, with the result that the monster lifted its snout from the ground, and began to growl fee-fi-fo-fum in a menacing undertone. This indication that the show was about to begin made Len and Derek caper with excitement, and utter loud cries of encouragement, but Barry paid no attention to them. His face was solemn, his eyes intent, his whole bearing that of one dedicated to the performance of a momentous enterprise.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Jackson had just finished beating up a cake for the morning smoke-oh, but when these sounds reached her ears, she tidied her hair, put on a clean apron, and hastened out to join the audience. Making her way to Marge’s side, she assumed her most social manner, and addressed the assembled company as follows:

“Good morning, Mrs. Kennedy, it’s real nice of you and Mr. Kennedy to come along and watch . . . and Mr. Dawson, too . . . and Mr. Arnold . . .” She bowed graciously in the direction of the men who—a trifle startled to find themselves thus transformed from mere spectators into guests—mumbled confused acknowledgments, and felt that they should have put on ties. “I always think,” pursued Mrs. Jackson, “that it’s nice to show an interest in what your neighbours are doing. It’s neighbourly, I always say, though of course it can be carried too far. I’m pleased you could all find time to come, because Ken’s always saying how farmers never have a minute to call their own.”

Marge and the men, now haunted by the suspicion that they were gate-crashers irresponsibly neglecting their duties in order to indulge a vulgar curiosity, maintained an uneasy silence, but at this moment the monster’s growl became a roar, and Mrs. Jackson turned to regard it with a proprietorial eye.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” she remarked complacently. “Progress, I mean. The things We invent, and the things We can do with them! All the same, Mrs. Kennedy, the sermon last Sunday was on not being vainglorious about the works of men, and that same evening it came back to me when I was looking at the sunset, because when all’s said and done, there’s nothing like nature, is there? Bert and the boys couldn’t think what had come over me, the way I stopped what I was doing all of a sudden, but it seemed to take hold of me, if you know what I mean, and do you know what I said? . . . I just turned round to Bert, and I said : ‘Well, really! . . .’ And then it sort of came into my mind that all our inventions are done under Providence too, and I was telling the boys only this morning that we shouldn’t give way to pride about bulldozers, and television, and electricity, and fission and things like that, because when you come to study it out, it’s all God.”

“Oh, yes,” said Marge—but rather unhappily. For though she had no quarrel with this statement, she could not but suspect that before the grass and weeds grew once more over the torn hillside, the rains would have washed many tons of earth from it into Black Creek, and thence into the Annabella River, which in turn would deposit it in the ocean, where it would nourish neither pineapples, nor tomatoes, nor even uneconomic weeds. This she could not feel to have been God’s intention, and she wished that we might employ the marvels we invent with a little more wisdom and restraint.

She was rescued from her morbid thoughts by jubilant yells from the boys, and some eager muttering from the menfolk. She turned her head in time to see the monster move forward towards a slope which, to her horrified eyes, seemed almost vertical, and since no barrier interposed itself save a clump of lantana, she clutched Bruce’s arm in panic, and cried : “What’s he doing? . . . He can’t possibly go down there! . . .”

Bruce was far too absorbed to take any notice of her, so she continued to stare, at once appalled and fascinated. In some dark and nasty corner of her mind she would have quite liked to see the law of gravity take charge of this snorting object, and send it crashing down the hill to destruction; but her vindictiveness did not extend to Barry—a nice lad, who had probably never read Samuel Butler, and could not be expected to recognise himself as one of the race of machine-tickling aphids foreseen by that perspicacious Victorian.

And, she conceded, you had to hand it to the boy that he knew his stuff. For the monster, when it appeared to be teetering on the very brink of disaster, suddenly veered away, lowered its head with a snarl, sank its teeth deep into the turf, tore up a large section, swung it sideways, and contemptuously spat it out down the hill. It then backed, and prepared for another onslaught. Marge said nervously:

“I still don’t see how he can help turning over on that slope.”

“You needn’t worry,” said Dick reassuringly; reassuring ladies is frequently necessary in beauty salons, and he has quite a technique. “It’s perfectly safe. It makes its own road as it goes.”

And so it did. After only a few more charges had been made, and a few more tons of earth tossed aside, the plan began to take shape. Where there had been a steep slope of green grass, there was now a perpendicular red gash some five feet high on the upper side, a long, red bank on the lower, and between them a sweetly sloping red strip, already recognisable as the beginning of a road.

Now the monster had tasted earth, and was working with rapid and methodical ferocity. It charged again and again, with lowered snout; its blade ripped great slices of the ground away, rose, swung outward dripping soil, stones and sods of mangled grass, and hurled them down. Shrubs which a man might have spent an hour grubbing out, it scooped up and tossed over the bank in seconds, and rocks which he could not have moved with a lever, it flung about like pebbles.

Ken came to stand beside Marge, and she noticed that he was wearing an expression which, from time immemorial, has caused dismay and foreboding in the minds of the anxious sex—that which a mother descries on the angelic countenance of her infant son, when he first discovers the enchanting fact that many objects will break if he flings them on the floor. It is an expression with which the passing years will make her exceedingly familiar. She observes it again when, seated on the floor beside his tower of blocks, he demolishes the edifice with one ecstatic sweep of his arm; and many times throughout his boyhood when, with infinite relish, he throws stones at bottles, prowls about with a tomahawk, hacking at everything he can find, pushes rocks over cliffs, registers delight when a tree falls, and counts himself favoured by Heaven if he may witness the collision of two cars, or the derailment of a train. For bangs, crashes, the sounds of splintering and the roar of explosions are as music to his ears.

In due course he arrives at physical maturity. Whether man ever attains maturity of any other kind is a question which woman answers crisply in the negative; but he does, in time, become an adult member of the sex which built the Pyramids and the Rockefeller Centre—to say nothing of castles, cathedrals, bridges, banks, mansions, milk-bars and suburban bungalows without number—and he therefore regards himself as one dedicated to constructive activity. His helpmeet, however, is not deceived. Since her weakness is confined to muscular development, and does not at all affect her eyesight, she has not failed to note that the types of construction which most excite his enthusiasm are those which demand, as a preliminary, excavation or demolition on a massive scale. She will most willingly concede that his structures, when completed, deserve her commendation. They are grand; he has made them very nicely; she will pat him on the head, and tell him so. But she well knows that it was the preparatory mess which he really enjoyed; and what is more, she knows that even now, in some unacknowledged corner of his being, he would just love to put a few sticks of gelignite under them. She therefore reads without surprise of the belligerent past, and quails at the thought of a belligerent future; she perceives that ever since he became the only tool-using animal, he has been building things, and knocking them down again, and she is piercingly aware, if he is not, which process it is that makes him look as Ken was looking now.

“Pretty good, eh?” he said exultantly. The other three men assented—but in tones which betrayed varying degrees of fervour. Bruce was impressed, and had already collected data for his calculations by consulting his watch at intervals, and pacing out distances. Dick sounded a note of jubilation, for at this rate he could hardly fail to collect from Aub at the end of the day. And Aub, with this selfsame thought in mind, expressed his concurrence rather moodily, though hope was beginning to revive in his heart. For Barry had reached a point where the grass gave way to a dense growth of every known weed, among which there grew some smallish trees, including a few self-sown exotics gone native—a couple of lemons, a little grove of paw-paws, a clump of bananas—and here, where Ken’s foot-track plunged into the Stinking Roger, he was having his first spot of bother. It was not, of course, the vegetation which incommoded him, nor was there any band of rock; but there were rocks—and large ones, too, whose dislodgement and removal called for more circumspection, and took more time than did the disposal of mere earth. Moreover, the grade had become steeper; the wall of earth on the upper side was now ten feet high, and on top of it the monster’s excavations had left a particularly vast boulder so unsteadily balanced that any more undermining would obviously bring it crashing down. Down it must come—but not in its own time and manner, for though the metal giant had already taken the buffetings of many falling rocks with perfect indifference, this one was big enough to give it a very nasty buffet indeed. Barry was attending expertly to the problem, but it was delaying the dramatic speed of his advance.

The monster backed, paused, lifted its snout high into the air, made a quick sally and a lightning jab, and retreated again, leaving the boulder quivering for a few seconds before it settled on its base once more. The beastly contraption, admitted Marge to herself, was revealing unexpected qualities. It was not all savagery and brute force; it was capable, under Barry’s expert hands, of subtlety, finesse and delicate manœuvring. It moved as lightly as a dancer; it positively pirouetted. Again and again it thrust at the rock, and swung nimbly back out of danger; again and again the rock trembled and subsided, while cascades of earth and stones fell away from around it. Aub’s gloomy face grew brighter and brighter. “No hurry, son,” he called solicitously, “take your time.”

Barry may or may not have heard this gratuitous advice, but he gave no sign. He had backed away, swinging his massive vehicle dexterously on its tracks until it lurked close beneath the bank, like a huge beast of prey in ambush, and from here he was studying the rock with an expression which boded it no good. Softly and warily he sneaked up on it again, fiercely and accurately he jabbed, and swiftly he retreated as it slid forward, and remained hanging so precariously on the crumbling brink that Marge decided not to look any more. Nor did she—until a dull crash, almost drowned by congratulatory cries from the audience, proclaimed the climax; then she turned to see the boulder leaping down the hill, gouging a deep scar through the undergrowth, smashing a shapely sapling, and fetching up with a sickening thump against a large log at the bottom. Aunt Isabelle, suddenly appearing at her side, remarked appreciatively that this was an operation the most interesting and educational, to which Marge replied sadly that maybe it was, but the hillside used to look so pretty.

Aunt Isabelle treated this with robust contempt. How, she demanded, would the agriculture flourish if good land were to remain uncultivated because its natural state was pleasing to the eye? This was the view of an unpractical aesthete, and however appropriate in artistic circles, entirely out of place here. For herself, she had resolved to recreate herself in the likeness of her peasant ancestors, who, in their time, must have despoiled many and many a flowering hillside. . . .

“Not with bulldozers,” objected Marge.

Aunt Isabelle very properly made short work of this feeble reply. Let Marrrrge not mistake herself, they would have been enchanted to use bulldozers had it not been their misfortune to live before the age of these mechanical marvels. It was unbecoming, she added sternly, to speak with the disapproval of this wonderful invention, for such machines were undoubtedly among the greatest benefits which Providence had conferred upon mankind.

Marge gave up. This continual passing of the buck to Providence depressed her, and she began to think rather crazily about a new version of Genesis in which an eighth day was devoted to the creation of bulldozers. And while she was thus absurdly and unprofitably engaged, Barry—stimulated by success and applause—was working with concentrated fury. He was getting through the troublesome bit, and making up for lost time, Lesser rocks tumbled about him as he sliced into the wall; a landslide bore down two young paw-paw trees and a dead stump; a large groundsel bush, crowned with a froth of white blossom, descended gracefully, still upright, and a burnt log rolled down on top of it; the front edge of the banana grove toppled, and vast leaves sank slowly, like green sails. The monster, advancing and backing, swinging and turning, scooping, pushing and rending, implacably flattened them into a mangled mass, shoved them over the lower bank, and continued to tear its path out of the hillside, leaving behind it a trail of devastation.

But it left behind it, also, a road, and so exhilarated was Barry by this miracle fast growing beneath his hands, that an invitation to share the smoke-oh which Marge and Mrs. Jackson carried down from the house, was austerely declined. “Suits me best to keep goin’ mate,” he declared when Ken went down to fetch him. “Once you start on tea, it’s just natter, natter, natter for an hour, I seen it too often. Anyway, me breakfast’s still ridin’ nice and high.”

This Spartan attitude abashed the spectators slightly, but not enough to blunt their appetites, or still their tongues, and they sat on the grass, natter, natter, nattering while they watched the road extend and descend like a bleeding wound across the slope below. Dick was jubilant, but Aub, though shaken, refused to admit defeat. The kid might strike trouble yet, he insisted hopefully; but Ken slapped him on the back and told him he might as well part up at once, because there wasn’t any more rock down there, and by the way things were going the job would be done by lunch-time. He looked so elated that Aunt Isabelle patted his hand fondly, declaring that this step he had taken to enlarge his farm was both bold and prudent, as the actions of a young man about to assume grave responsibilities should always be, and she begged—speaking with emotion—that he would lose no time in bringing his sweetheart to the Lane, that all might take her to their bosoms. It was well and movingly done, but Ken did not rise. “Break it down, Auntie,” he protested, clipping her round the waist and planting a kiss deftly on her cheek, “what would I want with any other sweetheart when I’ve got you?”

Towards midday the amazing truth could no longer be denied, even by Aub; the road would be finished inside another hour. The audience had grown by now, though its composition had altered as one or another of its members reluctantly mooched off to do some work, and someone else arrived to watch. Dick and Bruce had gone, but Aub (perhaps still hoping against hope for a band of rock) had stuck it out. Doug Egan had parked his truck outside the Arnolds’, and come in to take a gander; Wally Dunk had left his alongside Kelly, and just nipped down on the thin excuse of telling Mrs. Jackson they were temporarily out of cinnamon at the store. This news he had not imparted, however, for Mrs. Jackson had earlier withdrawn to the house, after explaining that although it was real nice sitting out in the sun, she somehow couldn’t enjoy it while there was work waiting to be done, some could, of course, and she wished she could too, but she was funny that way. Henry Griffith had turned up because, he said, it was plain that one would be socially a dead loss in the Lane for ever if one had seen nothing of this remarkable event; and Sue had promptly followed him because she darned well wasn’t going to be the only mug left slaving at home. Alf, EElaine, Tristy and Gaily had been and gone, but Amy and Gwinny had turned up together, and brought their knitting. Ken had spent much time prowling about on the road as if proving its existence to himself by walking on it, but he had now rejoined the group and was arguing with Aub about whether Kelly would be able to get up it after rain. At this stage Jack and Joe arrived, and it was Jack who presently remarked that it looked as if Barry might finish with a bit of time to spare before he ran out the fifty quid.

“That’s right,” agreed Ken, consulting his watch. “A good quarter of an hour, I reckon. Might be twenty minutes, even.”

“Them things can do a lot in twenty minutes,” observed Joe.

“I’ll say!” said Doug with enthusiasm, staring at the road.

They looked at the bulldozer far, far away at the foot of the hill; it was still backing, thrusting and manoeuvring, but on comparatively level land now, and the job was all but done.

“Might as well get him to shove out a bit of that lantana on the flat while he’s here,” said Ken. “I’ll need to fix up a few fences down there before I put anything in. If the kid could just clear me a line along where the old south fence used to be, I’d get it done in half the time—eh, Jack? I reckon there might be some of it still left under the lantana.”

“How’s he going to know where the line is, in all that muck?” Aub objected.

“I can show him, can’t I? See that bit of a track through the thickest part? That’s where I brushed a path last year when the kids wanted to get down to the creek for a swim. It goes right through the fence line, and comes out on that little clear, grassy patch—see? Well, that’s about fifty yards the other side of the fence. All Barry’s got to do is follow me along that till I tell him to stop, and then clear a line at right angles. Easy as winking. I’ll just nip down and word him about it.”

Everyone got quite a kick out of seeing him tear off down the road which had not existed a few hours ago, and Gwinny caused much astonishment by announcing that although Alf hadn’t ever held with the Casket, he said it did make a difference what you did with the money, and he reckoned it was real sensible of Ken to have the road made.

Presently a strange silence fell as the buildozer came to a standstill, and ceased its sputtering roar. Ken and Barry were seen in consultation, pointing and gesticulating. The road, it seemed, still required a few finishing touches, but at last Ken marched off towards the lantana, and the monster lumbered powerfully after him. He entered the thin thread of track, his blue shirt making a bright spot of colour against the green, and the onlookers above could see him pushing his way along it; Jack remarked that it must have grown over a lot by now, and he’d have done better to take a brush-hook with him. The bulldozer came up against the green wall where the track entered it, and began to shove.

“Cripes, she shifts it, all right!” exclaimed Joe admiringly.

Indeed she did. She shifted it so effectively that it piled higher and higher before her ravening snout; the ground was firm and level, so she moved at a good pace, too. It was suddenly observed that the blue dot began to exhibit signs of haste and agitation, moving ever faster along the track, and turning frequently to hold up its hands in a gesture which those above had no difficulty in interpreting as an attempt to halt the traffic. “By golly,” breathed Aub ecstatically, “the flaming thing’s got him on the run!”

Through the ocean of lantana the bulldozer moved remorselessly forward like Leviathan, pushing a high wave of greenery before it, and along the track ahead scuttled the blue dot, leaping, ducking and wildly gesturing. Aunt Isabelle clasped her hands to her breast and shrieked : “Halte! He is trapped I Halte! ““Save your breath, old lady,” said Henry soothingly. “He can’t hear you. He can’t even hear Ken.”

It was too obviously true. Barry could neither hear nor see the unhappy fugitive he was driving before him. The hungry roar of his monster drowned all other sounds; the mountain of lantana piled before it shut off his view of the ground immediately ahead. In the overgrown track, pushing, stumbling and tripping, Ken could not move fast enough to increase the distance between himself and his pursuer; nor had he time to effect an escape by struggling into the lunatic undergrowth before he should be overtaken. He could only flee—and he fled. Up above, his unfeeling neighbours were by now convulsed with laughter—all but Aunt Isabelle who, wringing her hands, exhorted them to hasten to his aid. Finding this plea quite disregarded, she warmly declared them a set of miserable poltroons, announced that she herself would shame them by proceeding to the rescue, and was half-way down the bank before Sue seized her and dragged her back.

“Keep calm, Isabelle,” she besought. “For goodness’ sake, keep calm. It’ll be all over long before anyone could get there.”

Admittedly these words were not well chosen, but Sue was excitedly intent upon the spectacle, and she spoke in haste. Aunt Isabelle uttered a scream of horror.

“All over! He is to be murdered, and you tell me to keep calm? See how it pursues him! He is mad, that boy who drives! He should not proceed when he can no longer see before him! Halte! Imbécile! Henri, you must act! . . .”

“What for?” asked Henry callously. “Ken’s showing all the action that’s needed. Just look at him—what more do you want?”

“Reckon he must be getting pretty close to where the fence used to be,” said Joe, staring raptly.

“Somewhere near,” Jack assented. “Wonder if there is any of it left?. . .”

“By jings, he’ll need to be nippy if there is!” Doug exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to get through a fence with that thing right on my tail!”

“Me, neither!” agreed Wally fervently.

“Bad enough getting through a good fence,” said Aub, “but an old one—all loose barbed wire tangled up in lantanna! . . .”

“He could get hung up in that good and proper,” said Doug.

“Too right, he could!” said Wally.

“Monsters! “screeched Aunt Isabelle.

“Now if it were a bull chasing him instead of a bulldozer,” observed Henry with detachment, “a fence would be a help. But Barry’d drive that little runabout of his clean over any fence without even knowing it was there.”

“Fi, donc!”raged Aunt Isabelle, stamping her foot at him. “For shame I Shut up! Oh-h-h-h—it moves faster! . . . See it breaking down all before it! Henri, you must prevent this disaster! I command it! Ah, my poor Ken, my poor boy! . . . He stumbles! . . . It overtakes him! . . . Release me, Suzanne, or he is lost!” But Gwinny and Sue had her by the arms like wardresses, and she struggled in vain.

“Lost? Not he!” scoffed Aub. “He’s holding his own, I reckon, don’t you, Wally?”

“He’s doin’ all right if he don’t trip too often. Put on a bit of pace, there . . . musta struck a clear bit. . . .”

“Cripes, he’s down!” cried Aub. “Okay, he’s up again, and moving pretty good, too. Watch your feet, son! It gained on him then—eh, Doug?”

“Run, my poor Ken!” screamed Aunt Isabelle. “Faster, for the love of God—faster! Ah, that terrible machine—quelle abomination!”

“Come on, boy!” yelled Doug. “Put on a bit more speed!”

“He’s drawing away!” cried Aub. “Fence must be gone, Jack—he never stopped. Fifty yards more and he’s out in the clear! Jeeze, he nearly took another header then! . . .”

“He did!” Joe cried excitedly. “He must’ve done—I’ve lost him. . . . Or d’you reckon he’s found a place he can crawl off at the side? . . .”

“No fear,” said Jack, “he’s still going. Bit of a bend in the track, that’s all. See, there he is again. . . .”

“That’ll lose him a few yards,” remarked Henry. “Tough luck.”

“That’s right,” agreed jack, “the ’dozer travels straight.”

Aub was bouncing at the knees, and his hands were sawing on invisible reins. Clearly he was back on the racecourse, and he had his shirt on Ken. Voices rose exultantly in chorus:

“Come on, Ken!”

“Boy is he moving! . . .”

“Keep it up, sport, you’re doing fine!“

“Stick to it, Ken!”

“He’s coming up the straight! . . .”

“Courage, mon cher—you arrive! . . .”

“Finishing in style, too, I’ll say that for him!”

“He’s home and dry! Hooray! “

Ken shot out into the clearing, veered sharply sideways, and staggered to a halt, flailing his arms in groggy gestures which, at last, Barry could see. Leviathan wallowed out of the lantana, stranded on the sward, and stuttered into silence, Aub cupped his hands round his mouth, and shouted : “Nice work, feller! Nice work! “

Ken was seen to turn and stare upward. He waved, and shook his clasped hands over his head. He hadn’t much breath left, but he used what he had, and his meat-day pæan came faintly up the hill. “I made it!” he proclaimed triumphantly. “I made it!” And everybody cheered.

Everybody, that is, except Aunt Isabelle. She was very cross.

“Make no mistake,” she scolded, “I write to the Government about this outrage! I write to the newspapers! I write to the Bishop and the Agriculture! I ask is it permitted that these wicked machines crush into the earth like an ant so good a boy as Ken? Tch! tch! He is not crushed—I see it—am I blind? This is only because he is of a type the most athletic, and has great resourcefulness. Not all possess these qualities. Are these others to be squashed while tout le monde stands by making the buffoonery? It is a scandal! I write to the Prime Minister! I demand the investigation! I write to the criminals who make this bull-roarer. As for that Barry there, I tell him off—I give him the works on the carpet! Figure to yourself—a youth, a blanc-bec, a veritable child like this to be entrusted with such an engine of assassination!”

Marge murmured sympathetically. She perceived that in future there would be one other person in the Lane who did not regard a bulldozer as a Christmas box from Providence.