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XV
A Car

Now span and spick
Right on the tick
  You pay your promised call.
Then you had luck
All daubed with muck
  To reach the place at all.

Now in the car
Sans noise or jar
  By nothing you're distraught.
Then, toil and sweat,
We'll ne'er forget!
But mot'ring was a sport.

When in England in 1903, as I have said, I bought, second-hand, a six-horse single-cylinder De Dion ear with two speeds and no reverse, and brought it out with me. With the exception of a steam locomobile which "drew" all its boiler tubes each time it went out, and so was generally kept in cotton wool at home, mine was the first car in the district, and for some considerable time the only one.

As every girl in the place wanted a ride, I became as popular with them as I was unpopular with the general public. With page 105the former I certainly did risk my liberty, but my relations with the latter landed me almost at once in the police court—for furious driving. I besought the very solemn "beak" to come for a ride, so that he could see for himself how well under control the machine was, but, alas! he would not.

Peradventure he was wise, for once aboard the lugger, I should certainly have done my best to "put the fear of God into him." How true it is that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light! Deaf to all my blandishments, he brought the case to an end, and thus addressed the prisoner at the bar: "By a law just come into force, it is my duty to fix the extreme rate of speed allowable for traffic in this town. I fix it at ten miles an hour. You have clearly exceeded this rate, and I therefore fine you five shillings." Although I think it was as a rule rather the noise than the speed that scared these good folk, yet on the other hand the mere sight of one of the more harum-scarum of the settlers' daughters coming down the main street, apparently in full charge of the fearful thing, established more than once a general sauve qui peut, although as a matter of fact, sitting alongside I retained full control of both brake and gears.

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Driving up country, I came to be quite experienced in telling, at some distance from the movement of a horse's ears, how he was feeling and what he would be likely to do. I found the drivers, as a rule, very much more scared than the horses; it was, indeed, surprising how very quickly these latter got used to me. Not so, the people; I remember catching sight of a buggy-full on a quite distant skyline, and seeing it suddenly and violently explode, at sight of me, shooting out its passengers in all directions. As one had frequently to stop the engine and walk some way ahead to lead, past the car, horses of timid women-kind, and as, in the narrow winding mountain roads, you had to be extremely careful lest you should meet a buggy suddenly at a corner, one's mileage rate was seldom high.

By care and good luck, though I was pretty badly hated by the nervous, I never killed a soul, nor, in fact, did I do any sort of damage.

I had kept the car at my house, some way up country, till rather late in the season, and I wanted to get it to town. But there was a mile and a half of quite impracticable mud before the metalled road could be reached, and I had only a pair of lively ponies, quite useless for a heavy pull. How-page 107ever, in the Colonies one does not readily allow oneself to feel done—there is some way of getting round almost any difficulty.

So after a little consideration I brought the ponies a feed, alongside the silent car, and then another while the engine was running, subsequently driving round and round their paddock till they were a little reconciled to me. A rough pole and swingle-tree combined, knocked together out. of some scantling, was loosely attached to the car, the ponies put in, and we made a start, my cook Lloyd, full of excitement, sitting alongside. I had to steer the ponies with one hand and the car with the other. A whiplash would have been impossible to manage, so I had replaced it by a long light tapering stick of "thousand jacket," but what hand I had for that I cannot clearly remember.

Having, without mishap, driven out through the gate, there was a long descent to a stream, and out of it a much steeper slope up, which we should need all our power to tackle. Half way down I put her in gear, thereby starting the engine. Off went the scared ponies at a gallop up out of the creek and away along the winding hillside road as hard as they could go. I flung away the unneeded stick and devoted all my attention to keeping the car on the page 108road. It was the most exciting bit of driving I ever had, but we did not come to grief. The combination of engine and automatically encouraged auxiliary horse power took us to the metal in excellent time. There we abandoned the pole, and sending the ponies back in charge of my highly delighted cook, I motored to town.

I was once taking out to her home a particularly charming elderly lady, when the car, having been stopped for a moment, refused to restart. I toiled and toiled at the handle, perspiring profusely, while the good lady, with that invaluable tactfulness which is, alas! so rare, looked deeply sympathetic, but said nothing. After about a quarter of an hour, however, there came to me, in a gentle silvery voice, the query, "Isn't the butter come yet?" and in the ensuing laughter the engine started.

And talking of tactful ladies, I recall, a little incident that took place in France in later years; Dame Crowdy, as she now is, had had some trouble with her car, and I was instructed by the Red Cross to take her round on her widely separated duties in mine. A tyre having burst, I did my best to replace it without wasting time, and was rewarded by my passenger with a full measure of appreciative compliment. A few days later page 109another tyre went—a front one. Naturally I exerted myself to the utmost, and put In the spare rim well under any possible record time. Again pleasing acknowledgments were forthcoming as I took my seat, when, first to my utter disgust, and then to our intense joint amusement, I discovered that I had attended to the wrong wheel.

Motoring in these latter days is just a method of getting there, but at the time I am writing of it was emphatically a sport. You did, indeed, sometimes reach your destination, but rarely without mischance or adventure of one kind or another. There were two live axles on the back of my car which used periodically to wear out and drop off; the spring inlet valve was never right for long, plugs cracked daily; springs broke frequently, and I once had to drive fifty miles with half a fence post fixed in to replace one. The ignition was by dry battery, which on occasion I have had to replace by a row of domestic bell cells. And though it is a bit of a problem how to get on when your battery runs out in the middle of a long stretch of arid road, even that difficulty can be surmounted.

My gear change depended on the fulcrum of a certain lever being in its exact position. Oiling, owing to my ignorance, having been page 110neglected, the thing seized and broke loose and I only just managed to crawl into a friend's station, twenty miles up country, before further movement became impossible. I am no engineer, but as there was no skilled help available, I had to do what I could, so I borrowed some fencing wire and running a twofold length of this from the gear to three separate points on the chassis, I carefully twisted each double stay to its right tension with a long nail until the gear was firmly and exactly fixed in its place, and then, crawling very stiffly from under, I drove to town full of pride and glory. For there is more joy in the car over one breakdown that is so mended, than over ninety and nine just gadgets which need no reparation.

My low-placed gear box hit a stone one day, and all the oil ran out. There was a little firm of blacksmith engineers in town, highly intelligent men, who had never before seen a motorcar, and with, whom I have spent many happy hours in investigation and repair. In this case it was a matter of soldering aluminium. They found a recipe for this somewhere, and we spent half the night together melting up assorted metals, and finally ran the mixture in. It stopped the leak and held all right, as long as I had page 111the car, though I am told it could never have actually united with the aluminium.

With so small an engine, and only two speeds, there were plenty of hills it was only possible to ascend by getting out and running alongside, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other pushing the car, a fine fat-reducing exercise in hot weather. Guiding the car out of a rut thus, from outside, on one very bad road, she came over too much and stopped with one wheel out in space and I myself tangled in fern and briars just below. This was, I think, the only really narrow shave of bodily damage I had in my New Zealand motoring. We dared not touch the car till we had her well roped to a passing dray.

The first time along any of the roads, one felt like an. adventurous explorer, but there was one track that all the time held forth an urgent invitation, the 150-mile run to Napier, the next port. We knew there were a score of cars there by this time, and we feared that in spite of its repute of utter impracticability, some enterprising spirit might get through by this track before us. It was a case for axe and spade, for ropes, heavy block and tackle, and an anchor. This latter was made by amputating one spike of a pickaxe and flattening the other, page 112and putting a ring in the top of the handle for a rope. The single fluke was driven into the road with the back of the axe. Furthermore, the undertaking meant the risk of smashing springs, the chance of being stranded many miles from anywhere, as the result of one of many likely happenings, and, in any case, a lot of very hard work. But all these considerations added to the fun of the thing, and my companion and I did get through, the proud first to do it.

We had to go in waist-deep clearing boulders out of creeks, to rush the rocky beds till the engine was drowned, and then to out tackle and haul on the kedge till we were black in the face, to get her through. We were stuck once in soft shingle with no holding ground for the anchor, and then the clutch fibre got wet. The result of this was that, to start the engine, you had to crawl under and slacken the adjuster, and then under again to tighten it before you could start the car. And up some of the bad hills this had to be done a dozen times!

The night came on, and we had to skirt unknown precipitous slopes on a narrow winding road, with only one miserable little headlight, and. later to make hair-raising reverse shots in the pitch dark, to get safe back on a great ravine bridge, on each of page 113our several attempts to get up the steep slope off it. Thank goodness, when at last we succeeded, there was a pub and beds round the next corner, for we were nearly done.

A dozen years after, in 1917, I came through that same road with a Ford. All the creeks had been bridged, but twice I got hopelessly bogged, and was finally stranded with the understays so buckled that, steer how I would, the car first made for the bank, and then yawed towards the edge, and I had to stop.

But since then I am told that the road has been metalled and improved out of all knowledge, and two or three buses run through every day.