CHAPTER VIIITOM LEARNS TO RUN THE ARK
On the following Tuesday morning the expressman backed up to the Bentons’ and lowered two heavy wooden cases to the sidewalk, subsequently trundling them up the short drive to the stable, and that evening Jimmy Brennan began to reassemble the engine. Tom was on hand, watching, helping where he might, and asking a hundred questions. Jimmy, whom the boys had grown to like tremendously, was patience itself. In fact, he seemed to like to share his knowledge with Tom. Scarcely a part was assembled without Tom learning the why and wherefore of it. Jimmy wasted good time often enough while he explained and illustrated.
Jimmy had gained his knowledge of engines in a machine shop in Providence, and of automobiles in an automobile factory in Springfield, where he had worked two years. How he had managed to land in Audelsville is best told in Jimmy’s own language. “You see,” he confided to Tom one evening whilehe worked on the car, “after I’d been at the bench about a year and a half I thought I’d sort of like to run one of the things. So I got ’em to shift me and I used to try the cars out after they were built. Then one day they wanted a demonstrator—one of the chaps was sick or something—and they took me. When the other chap came back again they said I could keep on if I wanted to, and I did. Then, maybe it was two or three months after that, I was showing a big ‘sixty’ to a man. I had him out two or three times and, finally, he decided to buy the car. Then he asked me would I come to Audelsville, where he lived, and be his chauffeur. I mulled it over and finally I said I would. He offered good big wages.”
“Who was he?” asked Tom.
“James U.,” replied Jimmy. “James U. Martin, to be sure.”
“Oh! And didn’t you like the work?”
“I did and I didn’t. I liked driving the car, but they wanted me to wear a uniform. I’d have done that, too, I guess, but Mrs. Martin and me, we—well, we didn’t hit it off very well. She said my hands were always dirty—which they were, I guess, seeing as I was always tinkering with the engine or something—and she didn’t like the color of my hair. She said red hair wasn’t genteel for a chauffeur. I said I wasn’t goin’ to change the color of my hair for nobody,and so I quit. James U. offered me a job in the mill, but I didn’t take it. Went to work for Gerrish and Hanford instead. Some day, likely, I’ll pull up and go back to the automobile factory. So that’s how I came to be living in this old burg.”
“Don’t you like Audelsville?” asked Tom in surprise.
“Oh, it’s good enough, I guess. Now, then, where’s that box of cotter pins?”
Class Day at the high school came on the twentieth that year, and for a week before it Willard, who was graduating, wasn’t able to give much time to the car. Tom managed to get one coat of varnish on unaided and did several small tasks about the tonneau. The leather cushions needed attention, for one thing, and after Tom had gone over them with tacks and replaced two or three missing buttons he dressed them with an evil-smelling concoction that Jimmy mixed for him. After that they really looked almost like new. A piece of carpet, discovered in the attic, was fitted on the tonneau floor and a rubber mat was secured from an automobile supply house in Providence for the front of the car. Meanwhile Jimmy had nearly finished his work, and Tom’s knowledge of gas engines had wonderfully increased. The wiring was put in new from batteries to cylinders, and Jimmy dissected the magneto and found it satisfactory.
Tom attended the graduation exercises and heard Willard deliver an allegedly humorous speech in his office of Class Prophet. Also he went to the graduation ball and forgot The Ark long enough to dance with Willard’s sister Grace and Teddy’s sister Bess—unlike baseball games, dances, it seemed, did not cause Miss Thurston headaches!—and several other fellows’ sisters or cousins, and to eat an unbelievable quantity of salad and ices. Willard went on a visit to Wickford for three days after graduating, and finally turned up one Monday forenoon ready to go to work again on the automobile. He had not been near it for a week, and when he saw it he stared hard. Body and chassis had been joined again, and it was a very brave looking car that confronted him in the middle of the carriage room floor. Jimmy had taken a hand at painting the running gear, and, now, all that remained was a second coat of varnish on the body and two coats below.
“Say, Tom, that’s some car!” ejaculated Willard. “Why—why, she’s a peach, isn’t she?”
Tom agreed that she was. “And you ought to hear her run,” he said proudly. “Why, out on the sidewalk you’d hardly know she was here. Jimmy says she isn’t terribly quiet, but I don’t think she makes any more noise than that big car of Mr. Martin’s! Want me to start her for you so’s you can hear her?”
“Do you know how?” asked Willard hesitatingly, moving away.
“Of course,” replied Tom, with a fine air of nonchalance. “It’s easy enough.”
So he turned the switch on to the battery, pulled down the throttle lever and tugged at the crank. There was a noise, but it wasn’t the sound of the engine running.
“Is she going?” asked Willard awedly.
“No,” panted Tom, “not yet. I guess she’s cold.”He gave the handle another half-dozen turns without result.
“He gave the handle another half-dozen turns without result”
“He gave the handle another half-dozen turns without result”
“He gave the handle another half-dozen turns without result”
“Cold!” said Willard. “Gee, that’s more than I am and more than you look!”
Tom scowled at the car. “Something must be wrong,” he muttered, fiddling with the spark and throttle and then swinging the switch on and off knowingly. “I’ll try her again.”
He did, while Willard backed further away, and for some unknown reason the engine sputtered once or twice and then settled down into a steady, rhythmic song. Tom, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, smiled triumphantly across at his chum. Willard gathered courage and drew near.
“Why doesn’t it go?” he demanded.
“Go? It is going!”
“I mean move—run——”
“Because the clutch isn’t in,” explained Tom. “The engine is running idle; there’s no load on it; see? If I pushed down on this thing and drew this lever toward me it would start and go right through the back of the stable, I guess!”
Willard begged him nervously to take his hand away from the lever in question. “I don’t think,” he said—they were almost shouting to make each other hear—“that it makes much noise, Tom!”
“Of course it doesn’t!” bawled Tom emphatically. “You see, Jimmy’s so used to—to high-priced cars that he doesn’t appreciate this one.”
“How much more is there to do?” asked Willard.
“Just varnish her and put a new tube in that shoe over there. Jimmy says the rest of the tires will last for months, maybe. He says, though, we’d ought to have an extra tire on hand. There’s a place at the back where you can strap it on. Then we’d be prepared in case we had a blow-out. I’ve made a list of things we ought to have, Will. There—there are a good many of them.”
“I suppose so,” Willard agreed. “And we mustn’t forget that we’ve got to make another payment to Saunders in a few days. I sort of thought we’d have the car going and be earning some money before we had to pay him any more.”
“We would have if they hadn’t held us up at thefactory for those new parts. Anyway, we’ll have her on the street in two or three days now; that is, if we can get the varnish on.”
So they set bravely to work with varnish pots and brushes and, by keeping at it until dinner time and then putting in another three hours in the afternoon, they completed the body and got the first coat on the chassis. Three days later the car was ready and Tom took his first lesson in running it. Jimmy took the wheel until they had reached a nice stretch of open road some two miles from town in the direction of Graywich and then he mounted the running board on the driving side and put Tom through his paces. Willard went along, seated in the tonneau, and showed signs of nervousness when Tom moved over to the driver’s seat and took the wheel.
Jimmy showed Tom how to throw out the clutch with his left foot and pull the lever back to first speed and they went trundling slowly and cautiously down the road, Tom holding the wheel desperately and staring fixedly ahead. Presently—after Tom had wobbled the car from one side of the road to the other for several hundred feet—Jimmy said:
“All right. Now when we get to that next telegraph pole, Tom, stop her!”
Tom took his eyes off the road ahead long enough to glance at the pole in question and the car headedpromptly toward the stone wall, and Willard set up a howl. The Ark was brought back into the path, and Tom, frowning terrifically, released his clutch, threw forward the lever and jammed down on his foot brake. The car came to a sudden stop some fifteen feet short of the post.
“Don’t be so sharp with your brake,” advised Jimmy. “All right. Now start her forward again and stop right at the post.”
This time Tom made a simply superb stop.
“Good. Now back her,” directed Jimmy.
Tom looked vacantly at the levers, forgot to release his clutch and made a horrible noise by trying to throw the lever into the reverse. At last, however, the car began going backward, Willard leaning fearsomely out and shouting constant warnings, and Tom toiling mightily at the wheel. Then Jimmy ordered him to stop and start ahead again. A hundred yards further on Jimmy said suddenly,
“Stop her quick!”
Tom jammed on the foot brake, forgetting to release his clutch again.
“Clutch!” bawled Jimmy. “Stop her!”
Tom, perspiring freely now, got his left foot at work and the car stopped.
“Don’t put your foot brake on hard,” advised Jimmy, “without releasing your clutch. You wear itout if you do. Now when I say stop her quick I meanquick. See? What’s the quickest way to stop her?”
Tom’s wandering, puzzled gaze fell on the emergency brake. He seized it. “This!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
Jimmy nodded approvingly. “Right-o! Remember that quick means that, then. Let her go again.” After they were started: “Now put her into second,” said Jimmy. “Forward, across and forward again.”
Tom made poor work of that shifting and he had to do it many times until he could accomplish it with what was very nearly one motion. But the most of that lesson was devoted to stopping and starting, and by the time the car was headed back toward Audelsville Tom was pretty well worn out, but twice as enthusiastic as he had been before. Jimmy allowed him to keep the wheel, the car running slowly on high speed, almost into town, Jimmy himself managing the steering whenever they met a vehicle, which was infrequently. Tom discovered that after a while steering was something that almost did itself, that as he grew accustomed to it he was able to keep the car in the road without any especial effort.
Tom was so eager to finish his education that there was a second lesson that evening after supper, and two more the next day. The only mishap was when, the following morning, in trying to turn the car inthe road, Tom almost slammed the fenders into a fence. Now and then Willard, who always went along, took the wheel for a few minutes and received instructions, but Willard showed little talent for the work and was distinctly nervous, and in the end it was decided that Tom should attend to the running of the car. Willard, however, expressed an intention of ultimately learning how. “You see,” he explained, “you might get sick or something and somebody would have to run it.”
Occasionally they stopped while Jimmy lifted the hood and tinkered with the engine; and once he made Tom put in a new set of spark plugs by the roadside, a performance that occupied a full half-hour, and left Tom very hot and dirty. Another day, some two miles from town, Jimmy pretended that they had had a blow-out—which, luckily, they hadn’t!—and made Tom unship the new tire from the rear of the car and put it on a front wheel. That necessitated lifting the forward axle with the jack, prying off an obstinate rim, and so, finally, removing the old tire. Then a new tube was partly inflated with the pump—warm work that!—sprinkled with talc powder and inserted in the new shoe, and the whole set on the wheel, the clincher rim being hammered on afterwards. Subsequently the pump was again brought into play and Tom’s arms ached long before the tube was sufficientlyinflated. Two days later Jimmy decided that there was no use wearing out the new tube and shoe as long as the old one was serviceable, and made Tom transfer them again! This time, however, they were in the stable—no, garage!—and it wasn’t quite so hard.
Another time—Jimmy had become so used to spending his evenings in the Benton’s stable that he found it hard work to keep away—Jimmy did something mysterious to the engine and then told Tom to start it. But, although Tom turned and turned, and although Willard took his place when he gave out, the engine refused to even cough, and Tom was instructed to find the trouble. That was a problem! Jimmy lounged around with his hands in his pockets and offered no comment, and even refused advice when asked for it. It took Tom just forty minutes to discover that Jimmy had detached the wires from the cylinders, although they were dangling there uselessly in plain sight! Another time, unseen of the boys, he shut the cock in the gasoline supply pipe at the carburetor and again poor Tom nearly worried himself into a spasm. It was all useful experience, however, and the boys enjoyed it after it was over. By this time even Willard, whose talents scarcely leaned toward mechanics, had got a very fair idea of the philosophy of automobiles.
You may be certain that Tom’s mother meanwhile viewed the progress of events with deep misgiving. Every day, as she said, she expected to hear that Tom had either killed himself outright or been maimed for life. Mrs. Benton was deeply suspicious of automobiles and nothing could induce her for a very long time to approach The Ark nearer than ten feet. At that distance she seemed to think that it could not reach out, seize her and trample her underfoot! Even Tom’s father, who was deeply interested in the car and the project, and who was frequently on hand in the evenings, had his doubts. In those days there were by actual count only nine automobiles in Audelsville, three of them being light trucks belonging to the express company, and the others large and expensive cars belonging to wealthy residents of The Hill. Consequently Mr. Benton viewed the contrivances with more or less doubt and suspicion. One evening, however, Tom and Willard combined their eloquence and persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Benton to take a ride. Of course Jimmy did the driving and, at the boys’ request, went at a snail’s pace until they were well out of town. Mrs. Benton sat stiff and fearful at first, but gradually her expression of nervous apprehension wore off and she relaxed against the cushions—the car was one with a high back to the tonneau after the obsolete but comfortable style of those ofsome half-dozen years ago—and really began to enjoy the smooth ride through the summer twilight. Mr. Benton’s uneasiness survived even a shorter time, and when Tom took Jimmy’s place at the wheel he only said:
“That’s right, son; let’s see what you can do with it.”
Tom soon convinced him that, if he was not as skillful a chauffeur as Jimmy Brennan, he was quite capable of handling the car, and Mr. Benton was highly pleased. They went all the way to Graywich, or, at least, to within sight of the town, and then sped back again with the searchlights flooding the darkening road with a broad radiance.
“How did you like it, mother?” asked Tom as he helped her out at the house.
Mrs. Benton smiled. “Very much, Tom,” she answered. “It made me feel so much easier to know that if anything happened we’d all get killed together!”
Another evening Willard’s parents and sister had their first ride in the car. This time things did not run so smoothly, for a rear tire which had been on the verge of collapse ever since they had bought the car decided to give up. That necessitated a change by the side of the road, under the light of one of the kerosene lamps, and the interesting discovery was made that the jack had been left in the stable. Tomexplained shamefacedly that he had jacked up one of the wheels that morning to study the working of the brake and had left the jack on the floor.
“Then how are we going to raise that axle?” demanded Jimmy.
Tom couldn’t tell him, nor could Willard. Mr. Morris was on the point of offering a solution of the problem when Jimmy winked at him and he subsided.
“We might all get hold and lift the wheel,” said Tom, “and then one of us could slip something under the axle. How would that do?”
“That’s all right this time,” replied Jimmy, “but supposing you were out alone in the car? What would you do then?”
Tom studied again. At length: “I—I guess I’d walk home,” he acknowledged. Then: “No, I wouldn’t either! I’d find a big rock or something and a long pole—a fence rail would do—and make a lever!”
“Right-o!” commended Jimmy. “Then what’s the matter with doing that now?”
It was done, after some hunting up and down the road in the darkness for the necessary articles, and Tom made the change, Willard helping him, in something short of twenty minutes, which was doing very well. Jimmy decided that the old tube was well worth having vulcanized and that even the shoe, as wornand battered as it was, could be repaired to serve in an emergency.
So Tom learned by toil and experience, and finally Jimmy declared that there was no reason why he shouldn’t take the car out alone. “Just remember this, Tom, and you won’t be likely to get in much trouble. When you don’t know what to do,stop! And stop quick! Then you can think it out and take all the time you want. The trouble with lots of folks is that they never learned to stop; they just learned to go; and when there’s trouble they keep on going!”
The next morning Tom was up with the sun, or very nearly, and, after dressing, stole noiselessly down the stairs, let himself out the back door and unlocked the garage. Five minutes later he was steering the car down Washington Street, his heart thumping a little harder than usual. There weren’t many abroad at that hour. Washington Street, save for the sparrows and a few cats and an occasional milkman making his rounds, was quite deserted. Tom was glad of that, for being alone in the car and not having Jimmy to depend on in a crisis was different! But all went well and at the end of his own street he turned into Linden Street and so to the Graywich road. There he let the car out and settled back in his seat. It was wonderfully exhilarating, riding through the fresh, moist morning air, and Tom’s heart kept time withthe hum of the busy engine, his doubt and nervousness fast disappearing. It wasn’t as smooth going as when the car had been full, for the springs were strongly built, and when the car found a bump—and there were plenty of them—Tom jounced around a good deal like a tennis ball on a racquet! He passed several cars and vehicles and had got some three miles from Audelsville when the engine began missing and sputtering. Tom frowned, slowed down and considered. Then, wisely, he turned and headed toward home. The car sputtered worse than ever, and when it came to a slight hill almost refused to take it. He tried running on the low speed and thought that helped, but just over the top of the hill the engine gave one final gasp and stopped!
Tom threw out his clutch lever, set his brake, and descended. There was still a good hour before breakfast time, but he was fully two miles and a half from home, and whatever was to be done had better be done quickly. The trouble, however, was to find out what. He raised one side of the hood and ran his eye over the engine. Everything seemed all right there. The wires were all connected. He looked over the carburetor side with similar results. The cock on the gasoline inlet pipe was open, and everything else seemed satisfactory. So he tried to start the engine again; tried first on the battery, and then on the magneto,spinning the wheel valiantly, but with no results. The engine seemed as dead as a door-nail! After that he went over everything again. And, after that, he sat down on the running-board to wipe the perspiration from his face and get his breath back, meanwhile trying to remember what he had done in former similar quandaries. Finally, what should have occurred to him long before came to him, and he dragged off the front seat cushion and, unscrewing the cap of the gasoline tank, peered in. It was as dry as a bone!
Luckily Jimmy had provided for just such a contingency by placing an old one-gallon varnish can filled with gasoline under the rear seat, and soon Tom was on his way again, and in another quarter of an hour ran The Ark triumphantly into the garage, having learned one more thing that would doubtless stand him in good stead.
Finally, three days later, to be exact, on the twelfth day of July, the great moment arrived. The Benton & Morris Transportation Company began business!