I quitted Truro under a sky of polished pewter, the air sharp with that peculiar tang which seems a herald of rain yet seldom fulfils its promise. My landlady bade me farewell with a look of mingled pity and suspicion, as though releasing a lunatic back upon the roads.
The journey north proved alternately exhilarating and exasperating. The Steam Unicycle, freshly stoked, displayed a most eager temper, fairly bounding forward with each stroke of the piston. Yet the roads conspired against speed: lanes so narrow that hedges brushed my elbows, ruts that might swallow a cartwheel, gradients that mocked all calculation. I advanced in fits, sometimes at a clip that startled even myself, sometimes reduced to near immobility, as if the machine sulked at the indignities imposed upon it.
At one such pause, whilst replenishing the boiler from a roadside pump, I fell into discourse with a schoolmaster, black-coated and bespectacled, who was walking to an appointment in a neighbouring parish. He examined my unicycle gravely, then declared: “Sir, you illustrate to perfection the triumph of absurdity over reason.”
I thanked him, observing that reason, when universally obeyed, yields nothing novel; absurdity, at least, grants us surprise. He bowed,ironically, I think,and walked on, leaving me with the distinct sense that I had been simultaneously mocked and praised.
Shortly thereafter, I was beset by a gang of boys who followed me for half a mile, chanting, “Silly Billy!” and “Tea-kettle! Tea-kettle!” Their chorus, though vexing, lent a kind of rhythm to the journey, so that I almost regretted when they dropped away at the edge of their village. I reflected that perhaps the true measure of an invention lies not in its utility but in the songs it provokes.
By late afternoon I reached the approaches of Bodmin, and here calamity nearly struck. Descending a hill, I discovered the brake-lever reluctant to engage. The machine gathered a head of steam with alarming alacrity, and I began to fear that my epitaph would be written in a fast approaching hedgerow. By some providence, the gradient softened before disaster, and I coasted to a halt with only a scorched glove and a heart pounding like a trip-hammer. I spent an hour tightening the mechanism.
Tonight I lodge in Bodmin. The innkeeper, a genial fellow, begged me to demonstrate the machine to his assembled patrons in the yard. They cheered lustily when it emitted a jet of steam, though one man cried out that I ought to patent it for use against invading Frenchmen. I retire, therefore, both amused and weary, my contraption stabled once again among creatures who surely despise it.
Thus concludes the sixth day. I feel myself, despite bruises and jeers, drawing ever deeper into the strange companionship of this single wheel. It may yet kill me,but I feel more and more certain that I will survive.
