“Isn’t it a beauty?” exclaimed Bert, as, a few days later, he swept up to a waiting group of friends and leaped from the saddle.
There was a unanimous assent as the boys crowded around the motorcycle, looking at it almost with the rapt intentness of worshippers at a shrine.
“It’s a dandy, all right,” declared Dick, with an enthusiasm equal to Bert’s own. “You skimmed along that last stretch of road like a bird.”
“It’s about the speediest and niftiest thing on the planet,” chimed in Tom. “You’d give an airship all it wanted to do to keep up with you.”
“Easy, easy there,” laughed Bert. “I wouldn’t go as far as that. But on ‘terra cotta,’ as Mrs. Partington calls it, there are mighty few things that will make me take their dust.” And he patted the machine with as much affection as if it could feel and respond to the touch.
“About how fast can that streak of greased lightning travel, any way?” asked Drake. “What’s the record for a motorcycle?”
“The best so far is a mile in thirty-six and four-fifths seconds,” was the answer. “That’s at the rate of ninety-eight miles an hour.”
“Some traveling,” murmured Dick.
“Of course,” went on Bert, “that was for a sprint. But even over long distances some great records have been hung up. In England last year a motorcycle made 300 miles in 280 minutes. I don’t think the fastest express train in the world has ever beaten that.”
“Gee,” said Tom, “I’d hate to be in the path of a cannon ball like that. It would be the ‘sweet by and by’ for yours truly.”