one
in the morning
This was testing thoroughly the resources of the automobile , which was playing the part of travelling kitchen and larder as well as travelling chariot , and could no doubt be made , with a little ingenuity , to play the parts also of travelling bed and tent . Yet , as I said all this aloud to Jack , my mind leaped forward to other nights which I should soon be spending alone tinder the stars , and I thought tenderly of my aluminium stove and tent , my sleeping-sack , and the other camping tools I had bought in Bern . From where we lay hid behind our rock to Airolo was only some thirty-two miles , and the car ate up distance with so voracious an appetite , that it was clear we should arrive in the little Italian town in the dead waste and middle of the night . To travel a forbidden road on an automobile , and then to knock up a snoring innkeeper at one in the morning , to ask him where we could find a donkey , seemed to be straining unduly the sense of humour ; so after consultation we decided that we should leave Airolo to its slumbers and speed down the Pass into Italy until we ran to earth the object of our quest . -LSB- Illustration : `` THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH '' . -RSB- Molly had produced excellent coffee ; the smoke of our cigarettes mingled its perfume with the night air . Our position had in it something unique , for while we were `` in the heart of one of nature 's most savage retreats '' -LRB- as said a guide-book of my boyhood -RRB- , we were at the same time enjoying the refinements of civilisation , and I suggested to Winston that our bivouac would form a fit subject for a picture labelled , in the manner of some Dutch masters , `` Automobilists Reposing . ''