“This might be a lot worse,” thought Bert, “if nothing happens now, I’ll have made pretty fair progress by supper time.” Consulting his speedometer he found that he had covered something over a hundred and twenty miles so far, which, considering all the delays he had been subjected to, and the bad roads, was very fair progress.
But even as this thought was passing through his mind, the front wheel caught in a hollow, the handlebars were wrenched from his hands with a force that almost broke his wrists, and he was flying through the air. He landed with a crash, and for a few moments, dazzling lights glittered before his eyes. Gradually these cleared away, and he sat up, feeling very dizzy and sick.
As his head cleared, he staggered to his feet, and looked around for his motorcycle. There it lay, at some distance, half buried in the sand. He went over to it, and, after scooping some of the sand away, succeeded by a great effort in pulling it upright.
“I guess my part of the race is finished right here,” he thought, with a sinking heart. “Something must have been badly broken in a fall like that. It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed myself.”
He set the “Blue Streak” up on its stand, and cranked the engine. It gave a few spasmodic explosions, but then stopped. “I knew it,” he exclaimed aloud, with a feeling nearly akin to despair. But his indomitable spirit was not yet ready to give up hope, and he commenced a careful examination of his mount.
The handlebars were slewed around until they stood at right angles to the machine. But this was a minor thing, and with the aid of a wrench he soon set matters right. The main thing was to locate the cause of the motor refusing to run, and he set himself to solve the problem, as he had so many others in the course of this most eventful and unlucky day.
He tested the magneto spark by kicking the motor over energetically, and holding the conduction cable a quarter of an inch or so from the cylinders. A hot blue spark jumped snapping across the gap, and Bert drew a sigh of relief. Provided the magneto were all right, he felt that he might get started again after all.
“The trouble must be in the carburetor,” he concluded, and forthwith proceeded to dissect that highly important part of his equipment. His suspicions proved well founded. The carburetor was packed with sand, which had worked up into the spray plug and completely blocked the fine grooves cut in it.
“That’s easy,” thought Bert. “I’ll just wash this out in a little less than no time, and then I hope everything will be all right.”
He washed gasoline through the carburetor, and cleaned the spray plug till not a vestige of sand remained. He then quickly assembled the instrument and connected it up with the induction pipes. Flooding the carburetor with gasoline, he gave the engine a quick turn over. Immediately it started off with a roar, and Bert threw the wrench he had been using into the air, and deftly caught it again.