“Go it, old man!” shouted Dick and Tom, each giving him a resounding buffet on the shoulder, “show ’em what you’re made of.”
“Leave it to me,” yelled Bert, for already the towing motorcycle was towing him and the “Blue Streak” out onto the track. They went at a snail’s pace at first, but quickly gathered momentum.
As he came into view of the gathered multitude, a shout went up that made the concrete structure tremble. This was repeated twice and then the spectators settled back, waiting for the start.
When he felt he was going fast enough, Bert, by a twist of the right grip, lowered the exhaust valves, and the next second he felt the old “Blue Streak” surge forward as though discharged from a cannon. It required a speed of fifty miles an hour even to mount the embankment, but before he had gone two hundred yards he had attained it. He turned the front wheel to the slope, and his machine mounted it like a bird.
Never had he sensed such gigantic power under him, and he felt exalted to the skies. He forgot everything in the mad delirium of speed; tremendous, maddening speed. Every time he opened the throttle a trifle more he could feel it increase. Eagerly, resistlessly, his mount tore and raged forward, whistling through the air with the speed of an arrow. In a few seconds he was abreast of the riders who had started first, and who were jockeying for a good position. There was little time for manoeuvring, however, for now the riders were fairly well bunched, and the starter’s pistol cracked. The race had started!
And now Bert found himself competing with the crack racers of the world. Each was mounted on the best machine the genius of his countrymen could produce, and each was grimly resolved to win. The “Blue Streak” and its rider were indeed in fast company, and were destined to be put to a test such as seldom occurs in even such strenuous racing as this.
Bert was riding high on the track at the start, and he resolved to make use of this position to gain the lead. He opened the throttle wide, and the “Blue Streak” responded nobly. So great was the force of the forward spurt that his hands were almost wrenched from the handlebars. He held on, however, and at the end of the second lap was even with the leader, a Frenchman.
Bert turned his front wheel down the slope, and swooped toward the bottom of the track with a sickening lurch. A vast sigh of horror went up from the closely packed stands. But at the last second, when within a foot of the bottom of the incline, Bert started up again, and with a speed increased by the downward rush shot up to the white band.
He hugged this closely, and reeled off mile after mile at a speed of close to a hundred miles an hour. Leaning down until his body touched the top frame bar, he coaxed ever a little more speed from the fire-spitting mechanism beneath him.