Read "The Spy in Black" by J. Storer Clouston online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
You may smile to think of a sailor being dismayed by a splash of salt water; but not if you are a motorcyclist! Several very diabolical consequences may ensue.
In the middle of that empty road, in that alien land, under the hostile stars, I took my electric torch and endeavoured to discover what was the matter. From the moment I remembered the probable salt, wet cause of my mishap I had a pretty hopeless feeling. At the end of ten minutes I felt not merely quite hopeless, but utterly helpless. Helpless as a child before a charging elephant, hopeless as a man at the bottom of an Alpine crevasse. Ignition, carburettor, what had been damaged? In good daylight it might take me an hour or two first to discover and then to mend. By the radiance of my torch I would probably spend a night or two, and be none the wiser.