Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was more
dangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabiting
the depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by the
sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon.
A pantechnicon whose ardour is fairly aroused may be capable of
surpassing deeds. Whole thoroughfares might crumble before it.
As the pantechnicon passed Denry, at the rate of about three and a half
miles an hour, he leaped, or rather he scrambled, on to it, losing
nothing in the process except his straw hat, which remained a witness at
his mother's door that her boy had been that way and departed under
unusual circumstances. Denry had the bright idea of dropping the shafts
down to act as a brake. But, unaccustomed to the manipulation of shafts,
he was rather slow in accomplishing the deed, and ere the first pair of
shafts had fallen the pantechnicon was doing quite eight miles an hour
and the steepest declivity was yet to come. Further, the dropping of the
left-hand shafts jerked the van to the left, and Denry dropped the other
pair only just in time to avoid the sudden uprooting of a lamp-post.
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