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occasionally traumatic experiences — of my life. 
     
    In addition to my special photographic work - and I had to set up a minute dark room for my own purposes in Number 1 tractor — and the general manhandling of supplies inescapable in such a project where the five principals are desirous of keeping their preparations secret - I had also to learn the mysteries of tractor driving, plus the operation of the radio equipment linking the mobile bases. Scarsdale, to my surprise, had designated me his sole companion in Number 1 with Van Damm in charge of Number 2, Holden and Prescott acting as his crew. I asked if that were not causing an imbalance among the expedition’s scientific personnel but the Professor’s reply somewhat startled me.
      
    ‘The technical qualifications have little to do with this aspect,’ he assured me. ‘All I am concerned with is that the two physically strongest people shall be in the leading vehicle.’
     
    This factor, together with the other special equipment being loaded, filled me with some disquiet. Rifles, revolvers, grenades, Very pistols and even what looked like a rack of elephant guns were among the formidable armaments being screwed into position within the vehicles.
     
    I had meant to ask Scarsdale about this but something in his eyes made me hold my own counsel. Certainly, none of the others saw any reason for comment or alarm in the material currently loading and I wondered if perhaps they had discussed it all earlier. I understood the four of them had been at the Surrey house for something like a year and certainly they all worked smoothly together with a score of private jokes and special references that I, as a newcomer, could not be expected to comprehend.
     
    The only outward opinion expressed was Holden’s jocular remark to Prescott one afternoon. Scarsdale was absent on some business in Guildford and Holden was lifting one of the massive elephant pieces through the sliding door of Number 2. He made some grave comment about Van Damm’s forthcoming ‘sparrow shoot’. To my surprise both he and his companion went into veritable paroxysms of laughter and the subject of their amusement, whom I had not earlier seen in the hangar doorway, joined in, Van Damm’s high, snickering laugh echoing among the roof girders.
     
    They had more cause for amusement shortly as it was soon discovered that I was an even more inept pupil than Van Damm at tractor-driving; try as I would, I could not at first remember exactly how to operate the two confounded levers and the complicated gear-stick that Scarsdale and Van Damm had devised to drive the things and my efforts in the misty orchard, with Collins hopping frantically out of the way and the Professor bellowing about the high cost of fruit trees, raised echoes of mirth long after their physical manifestations had ceased.
     
    Van Damm, I think, was secretly pleased at this, as it gave the Professor another scapegoat though he did not, of course, bully me in the same manner and his arguments did not take the same form that his mock rows with the doctor took. But he did take me aside on one or two occasions to express his gentle concern at my ineptitude and it was this, more than anything, which forged in me the ambition to succeed That I succeeded in becoming the best driver among them, with a ground-work of only three weeks’ training, was a tribute, I feel, to the Professor’s personality rather than to any special aptitude on my part.
     
    When the Professor went to the bank one morning to draw out a number of charts, books and other documents he had deposited there, we then knew that the time of departure must be near. We were not leaving, initially, by ship, but the Professor had arranged for the vehicles to be taken through France and Italy by road, in three great lorries and we could, of course, leave at almost any time, being subject to no sailing schedules other than those maintained by the Channel boats.
     
    We ourselves