Overdrive

“ It seemed ridiculous for a man who could pilot a squadron half across the galaxy in full overdrive, but the traffic frightened him. He hadn't done much driving, and certainly none on highways like this big northern boulevard. ”

“ To change the transmission from overdrive to the locked-in conventional position when driving in overdrive, completely depress the accelerator past the wide-open throttle position and as soon as the transmission is in conventional, pull out the OD control.
If the OD control is in the locked-in conventional position (pulled out) it can be placed in the overdrive position while the car is standing still. To make this change when the car is moving at any forward speed, accelerate slightly and push the control fully forward. ”

“ The carburetter sprays its vapour into the explosion chamber, the magnet flashes its sparks to ignite it, the cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders—a thing of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through the traffic of cities. ”

“ When the throb of the engine claims one’s pulses to its beat, and its breath paints one with a sooty rime, and one feels oneself being slowly absorbed into the system of that crashing, hurtling monster—a small integral part of its mechanism—what hope seems left at last of any detachment from the chimera to which one has committed one’s destinies! ”

“ Our machine is roaring at full speed, but we are not making over fifty or sixty miles in this rarefied air. The demons of this upper air are flying twice as fast and now there are nearly a dozen close on our trail and swiftly gaining.... We are near the edge and our danger is over. A minute more and we would have been lost, for now there are two monsters in front of us. We are surrounded, but we will reach the edge and will head down like a bullet before they can get near enough to head us off. Their screams are bringing other monsters from all directions. ”

“ That, when the vigorous, full-blooded body I possessed should be bereft of its faculties, I, as a creature apart from it, should go on, was beyond credence. The play of life through the human machine, I reasoned, was like the flow of gasoline into the motor of an automobile. Shut off that flow, and the motor became inert, dead, while the fluid which had given it power was in itself nothing. ”

“ And when a huge motor-car, offensively red, shot along like a comet, the low sun shining on its burnished brasses and its fiery varnish, then the swiftness and ease of motion, the sense of luxury and power, struck a chord of which he had never been conscious, and the condition of those who could command such things suddenly rose before him like an angel with a flaming sword. ”

“ The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of something to do, with dismal want of success.
‘They are gaining on us fast!’ cried the engine-driver. And the engine is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like ancient warders, waving halberds; policemen in their helmets, waving truncheons; and shabbily dressed men in pot-hats, obvious and unmistakable plain-clothes detectives even at this distance, waving revolvers and walking-sticks ”

“ She does not think the motor monstrous because it is new. She thinks it monstrous because she has eyes in her head; she thinks it monstrous because it is monstrous. That is, her mothers and grandmothers, and the whole race by whose life she lives, have had, as a matter of fact, a roughly recognizable mode of living; sitting in a green field was a part of it; travelling as quick as a cannon ball was not. And we should not look down on the seamstress because she mechanically emits a short sharp scream whenever the motor begins to move. ”

“ The motor, which the frenzied cupidity of manufacturers hurls like a juggernaut’s car upon the bewildered people and of which the idle and fashionable make a foolish though fatal elegance, will soon begin to perform its true function, and putting its strength at the service of the entire people, will behave like a docile, toiling monster. But in order that the motor may cease to be injurious and become beneficent we must build roads suited to its speed, roads which it cannot tear up with its ferocious tyres, and from which it will send no clouds of poisonous dust into human lungs. ”

“ I am like a motor set in motion at a speed of too many revolutions per second; the bearings have become too hot, and in one more minute the molten metal will begin to drip and everything will go to the devil. ”

“ He began to sense something of the power of that driving force that man has learned to harness. It had taken man thousands of years to learn to explode a mixture of gasoline vapor and air in an engine’s cylinder where a piston caught the force to hurl forward power in a four-stroke cycle. That four-stroke cycle could speed an automobile over the highway or a wind ship over the airways. ”

“ How many times at home I have sat in a theatre and seen cinematograph pictures of people in a motor being followed at top speed, with perhaps an angry father shaking his fist from the pursuing car. But never had I expected to be playing castanets with the Premier of Great Britain in the tonneau of a machine driven by a highwayman, and flying from unknown pursuers who were chasing us for Heaven knows what reason. ”

“ To those accustomed to it, no doubt, it may be tame enough—I cannot tell; but to those who mount an engine for the first time and dash through the crowded thoroughfares at a wild tearing gallop; it is probably the most exciting drive conceivable. It beats steeplechasing! It feels like driving to destruction—so desperate and reckless is it. ”

“ Being tossed from side to side in the roomy coach, now and then grabbing a [Pg 76] fellow passenger with desperation, gazing down from lofty peaks to yawning chasms below, hearing the crack of the long-lashed whip urging the noble steeds to faster speed, turning the rough, ragged, serpent-shaped drive, thundering through clouds and mist with lightning rapidity, and always in constant terror of a breakdown or error on the part of the fearless driver, gave one a sensation that would nearly make his hair stand on end. ”

“ He slept always in the long motor drives which we made in our daily routine of inquiry and observation. He slept like a babe under shell fire, unless activity of command were required, and once awakened to find high explosive shells bursting around his closed car, which he had parked in the middle of a battlefield, while his driver was painfully endeavoring to hide his body behind a mud bank.... ”

“ It may have been a coincidence, but is nevertheless a fact, that nearly every car we saw disabled, ditched, stuck in the mud or sand, or being towed in, on the entire trip, was an Overland car. It really became a joke. When we saw a wreck ahead of us, some one exclaimed, “Dollars to doughnuts it is an Overland!”—and it generally was. It used to be a common expression, “If you wished to really know people, travel with them.” I would change it to “Motor, and grow wise.” ”

“ They bombard the conductor with questions, and skirmish round the engineer, sending their suggestions flying round his devoted head, till a peremptory order is given, and they are driven back into the cars with some loss of patience. As if by magic, a breakdown gang is soon gathered round the engine—heaven knows where they came from, whether they dropped from the skies, or emerged from the bowels of the earth, for human habitation thereabout seemed impossible, unless they had built a nest high up in the dark cypress boughs. ”

“ The sense of conquest is glorious. The temptation to 'scorch' down-hill is gone. Undoubtedly the high-powered motor removes the temptation to excessive speed down-hill, and consequently removes a great danger. This is illustrated by referring again to our example. Supposing that the driver of the modern car wished to descend very cautiously, he could do so at six miles an hour and yet arrive at the foot of the hill a minute in advance of the old-fashioned car which ascended at four and descended at a speed of thirty miles an hour. ”

“ Often and often on the race track, with wide open throttle, every nerve taut, every pent-up ounce of energy concentrated in my arms, have I wished that I could infuse just a little more power into my engine, could give just a little more speed to my car, in order to draw away from the man whose car was creeping up to and overhauling mine inch by inch. ”

“ Bill brought the little car to a stop.
Well I know that sort of sand! You plunge rashly into it on low gear; you buzz bravely for possibly fifty feet; you slow down, slow down; your driving wheels begin to spin—that finishes you. Every revolution digs a deeper hole. ”

“ Unlike a motor car, in which the hand of the driver has to be perpetually on the steering-gear, and his eye perpetually on the alert, the pilot engine seemed to be flung forward like a missile, guided by its own velocity, and clinging to the endless rails with its wheels as with iron claws. ”

“ Down the uncertain track could be seen at reassuring intervals the slow, green lights of the track foremen swinging all's well. The deepening drum of the steaming engine as it entered the gorge walls, the straining of the injectors, and the frequent hissing check of the air as the powerful machine restrained its moving load, was music to the tired listener above. ”

“ It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the dead stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unexpected stoppage of the engine which had been clanking and blasting in our ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the look of blank astonishment expressed in every face: beginning with the officers, tracing it through all the passengers, and descending to the very stokers and furnacemen, who emerged from below, one by one, and clustered together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparing notes in whispers. ”

“ And then the probing with wires, the tugs with wrenches, the wrestling with screw-drivers, the many trials,—for the most part futile,—the subdued language of the bunkers, and at length, when least expected, a start, and the machine goes off as if nothing at all had been the matter. It is then the skilled driver looks wise and does not betray his surprise to the gaping crowd, just looks as if the start were the anticipated result of his well-directed efforts instead of a chance hit amidst blind gropings. ”

“ When you engage that chauffeur I presume you will insist that he knows the mechanism of the machine, understands the application of the motive power and other details which enter into safe and successful handling of the car?”
“Naturally,” replied Jack. “I am not introducing [31] my machine here for the purpose either of murder or suicide.”
“Exactly. That is just what I wanted you to say. Now, every human stomach is an engine which requires at least as intelligent handling as that of an automobile. Upon its successful working depends the mechanical action of the body. ”

“ But my instruments have demonstrated that our motors are now absolutely of no use. They are working just as usual, but our speed increases rather than diminishes, and from this I infer we are influenced by some vast attractive force. That centre of attraction to which we seem hurrying can only be the sun! No further words of mine are needed to render more clear the horrible doom which awaits us. ”

“ Then the chief engineer gives a shrill whistle, raises his hand, two quick wrenches at the switchboard in the electrical engine-room, a couple of blinding flashes half an inch long: the first valve-heads rise slowly, hesitatingly, as if unwilling, then quicker, a wild report and hissing, a wild irregular spluttering, then the loud explosions become rhythmical, and faster and faster both machines resume their regular vibrations. ”

“ The girl's foot apparently slipped from the brake and the car once more gathered speed. She clutched at the wheel but it was obvious that she had never driven. Somehow or other she got round the corner, but at the next—the wagons!
I saw her eyes, as the car came bumping down the hill, hear the wild shouting and exclamations of the old gentleman behind and there came to me one of those extraordinary moment which I make no attempt to explain, moments when action decided purely by impulse, and by an impulse irreducible law. We had made the most careful plans to wreck this auto mobile. ”

“ He is very abrupt in his manner at times, certainly, this strange chauffeur, and yet one's feelings aren't exactly hurt. And one feels, somehow, as I think the motor seems to feel, as if one could trust to his guidance in the most dangerous places. I'm sure he would give his life to save the car, and I believe he would take a good deal of trouble to save me; indeed, he has already taken a good deal of trouble, in several ways. ”

“ For, when the wheel of any vehicle is suddenly plunged into a rut or hole of a foot's depth, and from thence violently extracted with a jerk, plunge, and wrench, to be again dropped into another hole or rut, and withdrawn from thence in a like manner, - and when this process is being simultaneously repeated, with discordant variations, by other three wheels attached to the self-same vehicle, it will follow, as a matter of course, that the result of this experiment will be the violent agitation and commingling of the movable contents of the said vehicle ”

“ There is not one jarring note—until the 'honk, honk' of a motor is followed by the breathless, panting whirr of the engine, and a big car flashes down the road and past, travelling at the topmost of its top speed. ”