“Well, we must do something,” declared Lieutenant Marbury. “Come, it’s daylight now, and we can see to work better. Let’s see if we can’t find a way to get out of this prison. Say, but this sure is a storm!” he cried, as the airship rolled and pitched violently.
“They are handling her well, though,” observed Tom, as the craft came quickly to an even keel. “Either they have a number of expert birdmen on board, or they can easily adapt themselves to a new aircraft. She is sailing splendidly.”
“Well, let’s eat something, and set to work,” proposed Ned.
They brought out the food which had been given to them the night before, but before they could eat this, there came a knock on the door, and more food and fresh water was handed in, under the same precautions as before.
Tom and his companions indignantly demanded to be released, but their protests were only laughed at, and while the guards stood with ready weapons the door was again shut and locked.
But the prisoners were not the kind to sit idly down in the face of this. Under Tom’s direction they set about looking through their place of captivity for something by which they could release themselves. At first they found nothing, and Ned even suggested trying to cut a way through the wooden walls with a fingernail file, which he found in one of his pockets, when Tom, who had gone to the far end of the storeroom, uttered a cry.
“What is it—a way out?” asked Lieutenant Marbury anxiously.
“No, but means to that end,” Tom replied. “Look, a file and a saw, left here by some of my workmen, perhaps,” and he brought out the tools. He had found them behind a barrel in the far end of the compartment.
“Hurray!” cried Ned. “That’s the ticket! Now we’ll soon show these fellows what’s what!”
“Go easy!” cautioned Tom. “We must work carefully. It won’t do to slam around and try to break down the door with these. I think we had better select a place on the side wall, break through that, and make an opening where we can come out unnoticed. Then, when we are ready, we can take them by surprise. We’ll have to do something like that, for they outnumber us, you know.”
“That is so,” agreed Captain Warner. “We must use strategy.”
“Well, where would be a good place to begin to burrow out?” asked Ned.
“Here,” said Tom, indicating a place far back in the room. “We can work there in turns, sawing a hole through the wall. It will bring us out in the passage between the aft and amidship cabins, and we can go either way.”
“Then let’s begin!” cried Ned enthusiastically, and they set to work.
While the aerial warship pitched and tossed in the storm, over some part of the Atlantic, Tom and his friends took turns in working their way to freedom. With the sharp end of the file a small hole was made, the work being done as slowly as a rat gnaws, so as to make no noise that would be heard by their captors. In time the hole was large enough to admit the end of the saw.
But this took many hours, and it was not until the second day of their captivity that they had the hole nearly large enough for the passage of one person at a time. They had not been discovered, they thought.
Meanwhile they had been given food and water at intervals, but to all demands that they be released, or at least told why they were held prisoners, a deaf ear was turned.
They could only guess at the fate of Koku. Probably the giant was kept bound, for once he got the chance to use his enormous strength it might go hard with the foreigners.
The Mars continued to fly through the air. Sometimes, as Tom and his friends could tell by the motion, she was almost stationary in the upper regions, and again she seemed to be flying at top speed. Occasionally there came the sound of firing.
“They’re trying my guns,” observed Tom grimly.
“Do you suppose they are being attacked?” asked Ned, hopefully.
“Hardly,” replied Captain Warner. “The United States possesses no craft able to cope with this one in aerial warfare, and they are hardly engaging in part of the European war yet. I think they are just trying Tom’s new guns.”
Later our friends learned that such was the case.
The storm had either passed, or the Mars had run out of the path of it, for, after the first few hours of pitching and tossing, the atmosphere seemed reduced to a state of calm.
All the while they were secretly working to gain their freedom so they might attack and overpower their enemies, they took occasional observations from the small window. But they could learn nothing of their whereabouts. They could only view the heaving ocean, far below them, or see a mass of cloud-mist, which hid the earth, if so be that the Mars was sailing over land.
“But how much longer can they keep it up?” asked Ned.
“Well, we have fuel and supplies aboard for nearly two weeks,” Tom answered.
“And by the end of that time we may all be dead,” spoke the young bank clerk despondently.
“No, we’ll be out of here before then!” declared Lieutenant Marbury.
Indeed the hole was now almost large enough to enable them to crawl out one at a time. They could not, of course, see how it looked from the outside, but Tom had selected a place for its cutting so that the sawdust and the mark of the panel that was being removed, would not ordinarily be noticeable.
Their set night as the time for making the attempt—late at night, when it was hoped that most of their captors would be asleep.
Finally the last cut was made, and a piece of wood hung over the opening only by a shred, all ready to knock out.
“We’ll do it at midnight,” announced Tom.
Anxious, indeed, were those last hours of waiting. The time had almost arrived for the attempt, when Tom, who had been nervously pacing to and fro, remarked:
“We must be running into another storm. Feel how she heaves and rolls!”
Indeed the Mars was most unsteady.
“It sure is a storm!” cried Ned, “and a heavy one, too,” for there came a burst of thunder, that seemed like a report of Tom’s giant cannon.
In another instant they were in the midst of a violent thunderstorm, the airship pitching and tossing in a manner to almost throw them from their feet.
As Tom reached up to switch on the electric light again, there came a flash of lightning that well nigh blinded them. And so close after it as to seem simultaneous, there came such a crash of thunder as to stun them all. There was a tingling, as of a thousand pins and needles in the body of each of the captives, and a strong smell of sulphur. Then, as the echoes of the clap died away, Tom yelled:
“She’s been struck! The airship has been struck!”
CHAPTER XXV
FREEDOM
For a moment there was silence, following Tom’s wild cry and the noise of the thunderclap. Then, as other, though less loud reverberations of the storm continued to sound, the captives awoke to a realization of what had happened. They had been partially stunned, and were almost as in a dream.
“Are—are we all right?” stammered Ned.
“Bless my soul! What has happened?” cried Mr. Damon.
“We’ve been struck by lightning!” Tom repeated. “I don’t know whether we’re all right or not.”
“We seem to be falling!” exclaimed Lieutenant Marbury.
“If the whole gas bag isn’t ripped to pieces we’re lucky,” commented Jerry Mound.
Indeed, it was evident that the Mars was sinking rapidly. To all there came the sensation of riding in an elevator in a skyscraper and being dropped a score of stories.
Then, as they stood there in the darkness, illuminated only by flashes from the lightning outside the window, waiting for an unknown fate, Tom Swift uttered a cry of delight.
“We’ve stopped falling!” he cried. “The automatic gas machine is pumping. Part of the gas bag was punctured, but the unbroken compartments hold!”
“If part of the gas leaked out I don’t see why it wasn’t all set on fire and exploded,” observed Captain Warner.
“It’s a non-burnable gas,” Tom quickly explained. “But come on. This may be our very chance. There seems to be something going on that may be in our favor.”
Indeed the captives could hear confused cries and the running to and fro of many feet.
He made for the sawed panel, and, in another instant, had burst out and was through it, out into the passageway between the after and amidship cabins. His companions followed him.
They looked into the rear cabin, or motor compartment, and a scene of confusion met their gaze. Two of the foreign men who had seized the ship lay stretched out on the floor near the humming machinery, which had been left to run itself. A look in the other direction, toward the main cabin, showed a group of the foreign spies bending over the inert body of La Foy, the Frenchman, stretched out on a couch.
“What has happened?” cried Ned. “What does it all mean?’
“The lightning!” exclaimed Tom. “The bolt that struck the ship has knocked out some of our enemies! Now is the time to attack them!”
The Mars seemed to have passed completely through a narrow storm belt. She was now in a quiet atmosphere, though behind her could be seen the fitful play of lightning, and there could be heard the distant rumble of thunder.
“Come on!” cried Tom. “We must act quickly, while they are demoralized! Come on!”
His friends needed no further urging. Jerry Mound and the machinist rushed to the engine-room, to look after any of the enemy that might be there, while Tom, Ned and the others ran into the middle cabin.
“Grab ’em! Tie ’em up!” cried Tom, for they had no weapons with which to make an attack.
But none were needed. So stunned were the foreigners by the lightning bolt, which had miraculously passed our friends, and so unnerved by the striking down of La Foy, their leader, that they seemed like men half asleep. Before they could offer any resistance they were bound with the same ropes that had held our friends in bondage. That is, all but the big Frenchman himself. He seemed beyond the need of binding.
Mound, the engineer, and his assistant, came hurrying in from the motor-room, followed by Koku.
“We found him chained up,” Jerry explained, as the big giant, freed from his captivity, rubbed his chafed wrists.
“Are there any of the foreigners back there?’
“Only those two knocked out by the lightning,” the engineer explained. “We’ve made them secure. I see you’ve got things here in shape.”
“Yes,” replied Tom. “And now to see where we are, and to get back home. Whew! But this has been a time! Koku, what happened to you?”
“They no let anything happen. I be in chains all the while,” the giant answered. “Jump on me before I can do anything!”
“Well, you’re out, now, and I think we’ll have you stand guard over these men. The tables are turned, Koku.”
The bound ones were carried to the same prison whence our friends had escaped, but their bonds were not taken off, and Koku was put in the place with them. By this time La Foy and the two other stricken men showed signs of returning life. They had only been stunned.
The young inventor and his friends, once more in possession of their airship, lost little time in planning to return. They found that the spies were all expert aeronauts, and had kept a careful chart of their location. They were then halfway across the Atlantic, and in a short time longer would probably have been in some foreign country. But Tom turned the Mars about.
The craft had only been slightly damaged by the lightning bolt, though three of the gas bag compartments were torn, The others sufficed, however, to make the ship sufficiently buoyant.
When morning came Tom and his friends had matters running almost as smoothly as before their capture.
The prisoners had no chance to escape, and, indeed, they seemed to have been broken in spirit. La Foy was no longer the insolent, mocking Frenchman that he had been, and the two chief foreign engineers seemed to have lost some of their reason when the lightning struck them.
“But it was a mighty lucky and narrow escape for us,” said Ned, as he and Tom sat in the pilot-house the second day of the return trip.
“That’s right,” agreed his chum.
Once again they were above the earth, and, desiring to get rid as soon as possible of the presence of the spies, a landing was made near New York City, and the government authorities communicated with. Captain Warner and Lieutenant Marbury took charge of the prisoners, with some Secret Service men, and the foreigners were soon safely locked up.
“And now what are you going to do, Tom?” asked Ned, when, once more, they had the airship to themselves.
“I’m going back to Shopton, fix up the gas bag, and give her another government trial,” was the answer.
And, in due time, this was done. Tom added some improvements to the aircraft, making it better than ever, and when she was given the test required by the government, she was an unqualified success, and the rights to the Mars were purchased for a large sum. In sailing, and in the matter of guns and bombs, Tom’s craft answered every test.
“So you see I was right, after all, Dad,” the young inventor said, when informed that he had succeeded. “We can shoot off even bigger guns than I thought from the deck of the Mars.”
“Yes, Tom,” replied the aged inventor, “I admit I was wrong.”
Tom’s aerial warship was even a bigger success than he had dared to hope. Once the government men fully understood how to run it, in which Tom played a prominent part in giving instructions, they put the Mars to a severe test. She was taken out over the ocean, and her guns trained on an obsolete battleship. Her bombs and projectiles blew the craft to pieces.
“The Mars will be the naval terror of the seas in any future war,” predicted Captain Warner.
The Secret Service men succeeded in unearthing all the details of the plot against Tom. His life, at times, had been in danger, but at the last minute the man detailed to harm him lost his nerve.
It was Tom’s enemies who had set on fire the red shed, and who later tried to destroy the ship by putting a corrosive acid in one of the propellers. That plot, though, was not wholly successful. Then came the time when one of the spies hid on board, and dropped the copper bar on the motor, short-circuiting it. But for the storage-battery that scheme might have wrought fearful damage. The spy who had stowed himself away on the craft escaped at night by the connivance of one of Tom’s corrupt employees.
The foreign spies were tried and found guilty, receiving merited punishment. Of course the governments to which they belonged disclaimed any part in the seizure of Tom’s aerial warship.
It came out at the trial that one of Tom’s most trusted employees had proved a traitor, and had the night before the test, allowed the foreign spies to secrete themselves on board, to rush out at an opportune time to overpower our hero and his friends. But luck was with Tom at the end.
“Well, what are you going to tackle next, Tom?” asked Ned, one day about a month after these exciting experiences.
“I don’t know,” was the slow answer. “I think a self-swinging hammock, under an apple tree, with a never-emptying pitcher of ice-cold lemonade would be about the thing.”
“Good, Tom! And, if you’ll invent that, I’ll share it with you.”
“Well, come on, let’s begin now,” laughed Tom. “I need a vacation, anyhow.”
But it is very much to be doubted if Tom Swift, even on a vacation, could refrain from trying to invent something, either in the line of airships, water, or land craft. And so, until he again comes to the front with something flew, we will take leave of him.
TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
Or, THE HIDDEN CITY OF THE ANDES
CHAPTER I
AN APPEAL FOR AID
Tom Swift, seated in his laboratory engaged in trying to solve a puzzling question that had arisen over one of his inventions, was startled by a loud knock on the door. So emphatic, in fact, was the summons that the door trembled, and Tom st
arted to his feet in some alarm.
“Hello there!” he cried. “Don’t break the door, Koku!” and then he laughed. “No one but my giant would knock like that,” he said to himself. “He never does seem able to do things gently. But I wonder why he is knocking. I told him to get the engine out of the airship, and Eradicate said he’d be around to answer the telephone and bell. I wonder if anything has happened?”
Tom shoved back his chair, pushed aside the mass of papers over which he had been puzzling, and strode to the door. Flinging it open he confronted a veritable giant of a man, nearly eight feet tall, and big in proportion. The giant, Koku, for that was his name, smiled in a good-natured way, reminding one of an overgrown boy.
“Master hear my knock?” the giant asked cheerfully.
“Hear you, Koku? Say, I couldn’t hear anything else!” exclaimed Tom. “Did you think you had to arouse the whole neighborhood just to let me know you were at the door? Jove! I thought you’d have it off the hinges.”
“If me break, me fix,” said Koku, who, from his appearance and from his imperfect command of English, was evidently a foreigner.
“Yes, I know you can fix lots of things, Koku,” Tom went on, kindly enough. “But you musn’t forget what enormous strength you have. That’s the reason I sent you to take the engine out of the airship. You can lift it without using the chain hoist, and I can’t get the chain hoist fast unless I remove all the superstructure. I don’t want to do that. Did you get the engine out?”
“Not quite. Almost, Master.”
“Then why are you here? Has anything gone wrong?”
“No, everything all right, Master. But man come to machine shop and say he must have talk with you. I no let him come past the gate, but I say I come and call you.”
“That’s right, Koku. Don’t let any strangers past the gate. But why didn’t Eradicate come and call me. He isn’t doing anything, is he? Unless, indeed, he has gone to feed his mule, Boomerang.”
“Eradicate, he come to call you, but that black man no good!” and Koku chuckled so heartily that he shook the floor of the office.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 230