I did 150 in fairly good time and reckoned on having my lunch-tea-dinner-supper meal at Columbus, the State capital, about five in the afternoon. But about twenty miles from that city a most distressing sound arose from the engine. I had previously slackened down to a steady thirty miles an hour so as to give Lizzie the best chance of holding out over the journey. But now a series of violent thumps and bangs disturbed once and for all my hopeful frame of mind. Undoubtedly there was a big breakage somewhere and it was evidently quite impossible to continue another mile. With a final thud the engine stopped and the machine came to a standstill near a little bridge where a tiny streamlet trickled under the roadway. Near the bridge was, as might be expected, the inevitable hoarding: "Sell it and buy a Ford." Strange that Fate should at times be so ironical!
I made myself comfortable on a grassy slope and proceeded to take the engine down. This I soon discovered was no mean task. It took nearly three hours to remove the cylinders. Woe be unto the man hereafter who puts nuts where they cannot be loosened or places cylinders where they cannot be removed save by an Indian sword-swallower! The result of my investigations was that I found the front piston in fragments, mainly in the bottom of the crank-case. The gudgeon pin was broken in half and the connecting rod was waggling about merrily in the cylinder. All the bearings were loose, and although there was plenty of oil in the sump, one was devoid of metal altogether. This was discovered at the bottom in the form of powder. An encouraging outlook indeed!
Although my motto where a refractory motor is concerned—"to get it home somehow"—could have been ignored, I was not even in walking distance of anywhere. There was no town or village for miles around, and only a solitary farmhouse here and there. Further, an empty stomach does not improve one's outlook on life under such circumstances, and mine was very empty. I took stock of the whole situation. What should it be? Walk to Columbus and take the train, or stick by Lizzie and get along somehow? I counted out my money. It amounted to three dollars and thirty-five cents, not even enough for the railway fare. "No, I've set out to cross these infernal States on a motor-cycle, and I'll do it," I resolved, and sat down again to patch Lizzie's engine together.
The rumble of cart wheels on the brick road attracted my attention. The cart was drawn by a weary horse in the charge of a more weary driver.
"Hi, brother, got anything edible on board?" I shouted.
"I gotta lot o' old boots here," he replied, evidently in ignorance of the meaning of the word "edible."
"No, thanks, I gotta good pair of my own to start on before I come to that. Aincher got any oranges?"
"Yep, I got one box left, four fer a quarter."
Bang went seventy-five cents for a dozen, leaving me with two dollars sixty. Now, thought I, I have enough provisions to last a couple of days. Let Old Harry do his worst.
The vendor of boots, furniture, and oranges went on his weary way.