nearly four o'clock in the morning
So difficult was his progress , what with running off the flooded road and into the stream bed , and also from his wheels sticking in the mud , that he began to fear that he was losing too much time in this discouraging business . But there was nothing to do but go forward , and he struggled on , sometimes wheeling his machine , sometimes riding it , until at last it sank almost wheel deep in muddy water and he had to lose another half hour in cleaning out his carbureter . He feared that it might give trouble even then , but the machine labored along when the mud was not too deep , and at last , after almost superhuman effort , he and _ Uncle Sam _ emerged , dirty and dripping , out of a region where he could almost have made as good progress with a boat , into Aumale , where he stopped long enough to clean the grit out of his engine parts . It was now nearly four o'clock in the morning , and his instructions were to reach Dieppe not later than five . He knew , from his own experience , that transports always discharge their thronging human cargoes early in the morning , and that every minute after five o'clock would increase the likelihood of his finding the soldiers already gone ashore and separated for the journeys to their various destinations . To reach Dieppe after the departure of the soldiers was simply unthinkable to Tom . Whatever excuse there might have been to the authorities for his failure , that also he could not allow to enter his thoughts .