The Motormaniacs | Page 7

I stopped under a tree to look for the trouble and
pulled up the bonnet. The spark-plugs were badly carbonized, and
when I had seen to them and had put the captain on the crank, we could
only get explosions at intervals. There was good compression;
everything was lubricating nicely; no heating or sticking anywhere--but
the engine had lain down on us. The captain was so angry he wouldn't
speak a word to me, and mumbled red-hot things to himself under his
breath. Guess how I felt. But he was too much of a gentleman not to
crank--and so he cranked and cranked and still nothing happened. I
chased a whole row of things one after another--battery, buzzer, oil or
gasoline in the cylinders, defective insulation, commutator, water in the
carburettor, choked feed-pipe,--and all it did was to cough in a dreary,
tow-me-home-to-mother sort of way,
"If the captain had known anything about engines and could have made
it start, I expect I would have married him and lived happy ever
afterward. It was just his Heaven-sent chance to win out and show he
was the right man for the place. But he didn't know enough to run a
phonograph and began to talk about getting towed home, and how if he
ever bought a machine it would be electric. If I had been out of patience
with him before, imagine what I felt then! He said he knew all the time
I was driving too fast and hurting something, and thought he had
proved it by the cylinders being hot--as though they aren't always hot.
It was awful how stupid he was and helpless and disagreeable. He
couldn't even crank properly and the engine back-fired on him and hurt
his hand. Finally I got so desperate that I sat down and cried, while he
nursed his hand and said we ought to desert the machine and go home,
and that papa would be anxious if we didn't turn up to lunch. I knew all
the time he was talking about his lunch. You don't know what an
Englishman is if he isn't fed regularly, and it was now after one and we
were eighteen miles from High Court.
"But I wasn't the girl to give up the ship. As long as there weren't any
fractures or things stuck together I knew the expert could have made it
go--and if the expert, why not I? If the captain hadn't flurried me with

all the silly things he said, I believe I would have ferreted out the
trouble all right. But I was so cross and tired and disgusted that my
brain was stalled as well as the Manton, and so I gave up for a little
while and wouldn't even answer the captain when he spoke to me.
"Oh, yes, we were pigs, both of us, he in his way and I in mine; and the
sun went down and down, and it didn't make me feel any better to think
that I was smudged all over with grease, and that my hands and nails
were something awful--while if ever there was a galley-slave at the oar,
it was the Honorable John Vincent Cartwright cranking.
"We went on in this way till nearly four o'clock, when what should we
hear coming along the road but a buggy, and who should be in that
buggy but Gerard Malcolm with an actressy-looking girl! I wasn't
over-pleased at the girl part of it, but it did my heart good to see Gerard.
He drew up alongside the Manton and leaped out of the buggy, so
splendid and handsome and cool and masterful, with a glisten in his eye
which said: 'Bring on your gas-engine!'--that I loved him harder than
ever, and could have almost torn the captain's ring off my finger. He
didn't waste any time saying how-do-you-do, but just asked this and
that and dived in. Then he pegged away for about five minutes, wiped
his hands, took his bat that the captain had been holding, and said:
'Gears!'
"'It'll take me about two hours to break them loose,' he said, 'and so if
Miss Stanton wouldn't mind trading escorts, and if the captain would
take the buggy, I think Miss Hardy and I had better stay by the
machine.'
"Miss Stanton didn't look nearly so pleased as the captain; but when
Gerard said again he positively couldn't manage it under two hours, and
I snubbed her when she proposed towing, and when the captain
brightened up and made a good impression--he was so excited, poor
fellow, at the chance of getting away--that it all came right, and they
drove off cheerfully together. When they had quite disappeared, Gerard
threw down the wrench he had in his hand, and said we'd now have