Suddenly Andy reached forward and yanked on a lever.There was a grinding of cogs as the fourth gear slipped into place, for Andy did not handle his car skillfully.The effect, however, was at once apparent.The automobile shot forward.
"Now where are you, Tom Swift?" cried Sam.
Tom said nothing.He merely shifted a lever, and got a better spark.He also turned on a little more gasolene and opened the muffler The quickness with which his motor-cycle shot forward almost threw him from the saddle, but he had a tight grip on the handle bars.He whizzed past the auto, but, as the latter gathered speed, it crept up to him, and, once more was on even terms.Much chagrined at seeing Tom hold pace with him, even for an instant, Andy shouted;"Get over on your own side there! You're crowding me!""I am not!" yelled back Tom, above the explosions of his machine.
The two were now racing furiously, and Andy, with a savage look, tried to get more speed out of his car.In spite of all the bully did, Tom was gradually forging ahead.A little hill was now in view.
"Here's where I make him take my dust!" cried Andy, but, to his surprise Tom still kept ahead.The auto began to lose ground, for it was not made to take hills on high gear.
"Change to third gear quick!" cried Sam.
Andy tried to do it.There was a hesitancy on the part of his car.It seemed to balk.Tom, looking back, slowed up a trifle.He could afford to, as Andy was being beaten.
"Go on! Go on!" begged Pete."You'll have to keep on fourth gear to beat him, Andy.""That's what!" murmured the bully.Once more he shifted the gears.There was a grinding, smashing sound, and the car lost speed.Then it slowed up still more, and finally stopped.Then it began to back down hill.
"I've stripped those blamed gears!" exclaimed Andy ruefully."Can't you beat him?" asked Pete.
"I could have, easily, if my gears hadn't broken," declared the bully, but, as a matter of fact, he could not have done so."I oughtn't to have changed, going up hill," he added, as he jammed on the brakes, to stop the car from sliding down the slope.
Tom saw and heard.
"I thought you were so anxious to race," he said, exultantly, as well he might."I don't want to try a contest down hill, though, Andy," and he laughed at the red-haired lad, who was furious.
"Aw, go on!" was all the retort the squint-eyed one could think of to make.
"I am going on," replied our hero."Just to show you that I can go down hill, watch me."He turned his motor-cycle, and approached Andy's stalled car, for Tom was some distance in advance of it, up the slope by this time.As he approached the auto, containing the three disconcerted cronies, something bounded out of Tom's pocket.It was the bottle of stove blacking he had purchased for Mrs.Baggert.The bottle fell in the soft dirt in front of his forward wheel, and a curious thing happened.Perhaps you have seen a bicycle or auto tire strike a stone at an angle, and throw it into the air with great force.That was what happened to the bottle.Tom's front wheel struck the cork, which fitted tightly, and, just as when you hit one end of the wooden "catty" and it bounds up, the bottle described a curve through the air, and flew straight toward Andy's car.It struck the brass frame of the wind shield with a crash.
The bottle broke, and in an instant the black liquid was spattered all over Andy, Sam and Pete.It could not have been done more effectively if Tom had thrown it by hand.All over their clothes, their hands and faces, and the front of the car went the dreary black.Tom looked on, hardly able to believe what he saw.
"Wow! Wup! Ug! Blug! Mug!" spluttered Sam, who had some of the stuff in his mouth.
"Oh! Oh!" yelled Pete.
"You did that on purpose, Tom Swift!" shouted Andy, wiping some of the blacking from his left eye."I'll have you arrested for that! You'veruined my car, and look at my suit!"
"Mine's worse!" murmured Sam, glancing down at his light trousers, which were of the polka-dot pattern now.
"No, mine is," insisted Pete, whose white shirt was of the hue of a stove pipe.
Andy wiped some of the black stuff from his nose, whence it was dropping on the steering wheel.
"You just wait!" the bully called to Tom."I'll get even with you for this!""It was an accident! I didn't mean to do that," explained Tom, trying not to laugh, as he dismounted from his motorcycle, ready to render what assistance he could.
