“Not any longer than we can help,” Tom answered. “Every minute counts when you’re trying to circle the globe in twenty days. But we’ll have to wait for that bearing to cool. Did she chew up the metal?” he asked Peltok, referring to the soft anti-friction lining material which the axle, or shaft, of any fast-moving machine comes in contact with instead of directly on the bearing itself.
“I’m afraid so,” was the answer. “But I can cast a new journal for you.”
“Good!” exclaimed Tom. “You three had better get something to eat,” he added to Brinkley and the others. “Ned and I will stand watch. Not that there’s anything we can do until she cools down, though,” he added, with a rueful laugh.
Since the machinists had had nothing to eat since early in the morning, before the take-off, they did ample justice to the meal the tank man had gotten ready.
Meanwhile, Tom and Ned went to the engine room to examine the damage. The Air Monarch was gently rising and falling on a long swell. Just where they had come down Tom did not know, without taking a marine observation, but he judged it to be perhaps four or five hundred miles off the Atlantic coast—not a bad bit of distance to have covered in this time. But of course he realized he would have to do much better than this to win the race.
It did not take Tom long to find the overheated bearing. It had become red-hot from lack of oil, which was supposed to be fed to it constantly, but it was now cooling down and when it was completely cool the burned anti-friction metal could be cut out and new put in.
“There’s what did the damage!” exclaimed Tom as he unscrewed the coupling of a small copper oil feed pipe and took out a little ball of what seemed to be rubber. “That kept the oil from cooling the bearing.”
“Do you think the Red Arrow imps had anything to do with that?” asked Ned.
“It’s possible, of course,” Tom replied. “But hardly probable. This isn’t one of the main bearings, and the oil feed pipe would be hard to get at to tinker with. Hussy and that fellow we caught in the hangar night before last didn’t have time to unscrew the coupling, slip in the rubber, and then put it together again. And it was all right when we started.
“What I think is that this bit of rubber came from a gasket—it just naturally worked loose and was forced into the pipe. I use a forced feed oil system. It’s just one of those accidents that will happen. Lucky it wasn’t any worse.”