'What's up?' he shouted, as I caught up the shovel once again.

'Looking out for a clock!' I called back.

'It's coming up to quarter to!' shouted Clive.

Like all fellows of the right sort he never wore a watch and always knew the time.

'I just wanted to see it!' I said. 'It's lit by gas.'

'Advertising, that is!' said Clive. He was notching up once more, and things were getting pretty lively now. We were running down to Rose Grove, and I had to move about just to keep still, if you take my meaning.

'Sometimes,' I shouted, throwing coal and feeling the sweat start to spring out of me, 'you can see more at night than you can by day!'

What Clive made of this bit of philosophy I don't know because he was too busy finding his own feet and looking at his reflection in the engine-brake handle, trying to make out whether the hair restorer was working. I took off my jacket and laid it on the sandbox.

We were galloping past the black house that always had birds flying over it. That meant we'd crossed over from Yorkshire to Lancashire. Next came the schoolhouse on the hill, the one that always had the big cot in the window, which I didn't like to see because it made the place more like a gaol.

I looked at the sandbox, and saw that my coat had been shaken off by the motion of the Highflyer. This was the engine's famous roll.

Clive suddenly stood back and started moving his hands as if he was turning a wheel, and then bang – Clive had seen it before me – a motorcar was alongside of us on the road to Accrington. Clive was laughing. He opened 1418 up a bit more, but this motor was keeping up all right, though it looked to me like a giant baby-carriage. Just then the road snatched the car right up and away, but it came back hard alongside, and I saw the motorist – he might have been laughing, too, behind his goggles.