“The police will arrest him,” said the railroad man.
It was then Ned’s turn to chuckle. “I am sorry for your railroad police if they tackle Koku right now,” he said. “He’d lay out about a dozen ordinary men without half trying. But, ordinarily, he is the most mild-mannered fellow who ever lived.”
“He will come back, if he is let alone, as harmless as a kitten,” Tom observed. “And when I am not with the Hercules Three-Oughts-One, and while I continue making my tests, Koku will be on guard. You might tell your police force, Mr. Bartholomew, to let him alone. Now come aboard and let me show you what I have been trying to do.”
They spent two hours inside the cab of the great locomotive. Mr. Richard Bartholomew was possessed of no small degree of mechanical education. He might not be a genius in mechanics as Tom Swift was, but he could follow the latter’s explanations regarding the improvements in the electrical equipment of this new type of locomotive.
“I don’t know what your speed tests will show, Mr. Swift,” said the railroad president, with added enthusiasm. “But if those parts will do what you say they have already done, you’ve got the Jandels beat a mile! I’m for you, strong. Yes, sir! like your friend, Newton, here, I believe that you have hit the right track. You are going to triumph.”
But Tom’s triumph did not come at once. He knew more about the uncertainties of mechanical contrivances than did either Mr. Bartholomew or Ned Newton.
The very next day the Hercules 0001 was got out upon a section of the electrified system of the Hendrickton & Pas Alos Railway, and the pantagraphs of the huge locomotive for the first time came into connection with the twin conductor trolleys which overhung the rails.
Ned accompanied Tom as assistant. Koku was allowed by the inventor to roam about the hills as much as he pleased during the hours in which his master was engaged with the Hercules 0001. Tom did not think any harm would come to Koku, and he knew that the giant would enjoy immensely a free foot in such a wild country. The two young fellows, dressed in working suits of overall stuff, spent long hours in the cab of the electric locomotive. Their try-outs had to be made for the most part on sidetracks and freight switches, some miles outside Hendrickton, where the invention would not be in the way of regular traffic.
Speed on level tracks had been raised in one test to over ninety-five miles an hour and Mr. Bartholomew cheered wildly from the cab of a huge Mallet that paced Tom’s locomotive on a parallel track. No steam locomotive had ever made such fast time.
But Tom was after something bigger than this. He wanted to show the president of the H. & P. A. that the Hercules 0001 could drag a load over the Pas Alos Range at a pace never before gained by any mountain-hog.
Therefore he coaxed the electric locomotive out into the hills, some hundred or more miles from headquarters. He had to keep in touch with the train dispatcher’s office, of course; the new machine had often to take a sidetrack. Nor was much of this hilly right-of-way electrified. The Jandels locomotive had been found to be a failure on the sharp grades; so the extension of the trolley system had been abandoned.
But there was one steep grade between Hammon and Cliff City that had been completed. The current could be fed to the cables over this stretch of track, and for a week Tom used this long and steep grade just as much as he could, considering of course the demands of the regular traffic.
The telegraph operator at Half Way (merely a name for a station, for there was not a habitation in sight) thrust his long upper-length out of the telegraph office window one afternoon and waved a “highball” to the waiting electric locomotive on the sidetrack.
“Dispatcher says you can have Track Number Two West till the four-thirteen, westbound, is due. I’ll slip the operator at Cliff City the news and he’ll be on the lookout for you as well as me, Mr. Swift. Go to it.”
Every man on the system was interested, and most of them enthusiastic, about Tom’s invention. The latter knew that he could depend upon this operator and his mate to watch out for the western-bound flyer that would begin its climb of the grade at Hammon less than half an hour hence.
The electric locomotive was coaxed out across the switch. Tom was earnestly inspecting the more delicate parts of the mechanism while Ned (and proud he was to do it) handled the levers. Once on the main line he moved the controller forward. The machine began to pick up speed.
The drumming of the wheels over the rail joints became a single note—an increasing roar of sound. The electric locomotive shot up the grade. The arrow on the speedometer crept around the dial and Ned’s eye was more often fastened on that than it was on the glistening twin rails which mounted the grade.
Black-green hemlock and spruce bordered the right of way on either hand. Their shadows made the tunnel through the forest almost dark. But Tom had not seen fit to turn on the headlight.
“How is she making out?” asked the inventor, coming to look over his chum’s shoulder.
“It’s great, Tom!” breathed Ned Newton, his eyes glistening. “She eats this grade up.”
“And it’s within a narrow fraction of a two per cent.,” said the inventor proudly. “She takes it without a jar—Hold on! What’s that ahead?”
The locomotive had traveled ten miles or more from Half Way. The summit of the grade was not far ahead. But the forest shut out all view of the station at Cliff City and the structures that stood near it.
Right across the steel ribbons on which the hercules 0001 ran, Tom had seen something which brought the question to his lips. Ned Newton saw it too, and he shouted aloud:
“Tree down! A log fallen, Tom!”
He did not lose completely his self-control. But he grabbed the levers with less care than he should. He tried to yank two of them at once, and, in doing so, he fouled the brakes!
He had shut off connection with the current. But the brake control was jammed. The locomotive quickly came to a halt. Then, before Tom could get to the open door, the wheels began spinning in reverse and the great Hercules 0001 began the descent of the steep grade, utterly unmanageable!
CHAPTER XIX
PERIL, THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
Tom Swift’s first thought was one of thankfulness. Thankfulness that he did not have a drag of fifty or sixty steel gondolas or the like to add their weight to the down-pull. The locomotive’s own weight of approximately two hundred and seventy tons was enough.
For when the inventor pushed Ned aside and tried to handle the controllers properly, he found them unmanageable. There was not a chance of freeing them and getting power on the brakes. The Hercules 0001 was backing down the mountain side with a speed that was momentarily increasing, and without a chance of retarding it!
The young inventor at that moment of peril, knew no more what to do to avert disaster than Ned Newton himself.
It flashed across his mind, however, that others beside themselves were in peril because of this accident. The fast express from the East that should pass Half Way at four-thirteen, might already be climbing the hill from Hammon. Hammon, at the foot of the grade, was twenty-five miles away. Nor was the track straight.
If the operator at Half Way did not see the runaway locomotive and telephone the danger to the foot of the grade, when the Hercules 0001 came tearing down the track it might ram something in the Hammon yard, if it did not actually collide with the approaching westbound express.
Such an emergency as this is likely either to numb the brains of those entangled in the peril or excite them to increased activity. Ned Newton was apparently stunned by the catastrophe. Tom’s brain never worked more clearly.
He seized the siren lever and set it at full, so that the blast called up continuous echoes in the forest as the locomotive plunged down the incline. He ran to the door again, on the side where Half Way station lay, and hung out to signal the operator who had so recently given him right of way on this stretch of mountain road.
“We’re going to smash! We’re going to smash!” groaned Ned Newton.
To
m read these words on his chum’s lips, rather than heard them, for the roar of the descending locomotive drowned every other sound. Tom waved an encouraging hand, but did not reply audibly.
Meanwhile his brain was working as fast as ever it had. He had instantly comprehended all the danger of the situation. But in addition he appreciated the fact that such an accident as this might happen at any time to this or any other locomotive he might build.
Automatic brakes were all right. If there had been a good drag of cars behind the Hercules 0001, on which the compressed air brakes might have been set, the present manifest peril might have been obliterated. The brakes on the cars would have stopped the whole train.
But to halt this huge monster when alone, on the grade, was another matter. Once the locomotive brake lever was jammed, as in this case, there was no help for the huge machine. It had to ride to the foot of the grade—if it did not chance to hit something on the way!
And with this realization of both the imminent peril and the need of averting it, to Tom’s active brain came the germ of an idea that he determined to put into force, if he lived through this accident, on each and every electric locomotive that he might in the future build.
This monster, flying faster and faster down the mountain side, was a menace to everything in its track. There might be almost anything in the way of rolling stock on the section between Half Way and Hammon at the foot of the grade. If this thunderbolt of wood and steel collided with any other train, with the force and weight gathered by its plunge down the mountain, it would drive through such obstruction like a projectile from Tom’s own big cannon.
Tom realized this fact. He knew that whatever object the Hercules 0001 might strike, that object would be shattered and scattered all about the right of way. What might happen to the runaway was another matter. But the inventor believed that the electric locomotive would be less injured than anything with which it came into collision.
At any rate, thought of the peril to himself and his invention had secondary consideration in Tom Swift’s mind. It was what the monster which he could not control might do to other rolling stock of the H. & P. A. that rasped the young fellow’s mind.
The grade above Half Way had few curves. Tom soon caught the first glimpse of the station. Would the operator hear the roar of the descending runaway and understand what had happened?
He leaned far out from the open doorway and waved his cap madly. He began to shout a warning, although he saw not a soul about the station and knew very well that his voice was completely drowned by the voice of the siren and the drumming of the great wheels.
Suddenly the tousled head of the operator popped out of his window. He saw the coming locomotive, the drivers smoking!
To be a good railroad man one has to have his wits about him. To be a good operator at a backwoods station one has to have two sets of wits—one set to tell what to do in an emergency, the other to listen and apprehend the voice of the sounder.
This Half Way man was good. He knew better than to try the telegraph instrument. He grabbed the telephone receiver and jiggled the hook up and down on the standard while the Hercules 0001 roared past the station.
It did not need Tom’s frantically waving cap to warn him what had happened. And he remembered clearly the fact of the expected westbound flyer.
“Hammon? Get me? This is Half Way. That derned electric hog has sprung something and is coming down, lickity-split!
“Yes! Clear your yard! Where’s Number Twenty-eight? Good! Side her, or she’ll be ditched. Get me?”
The voice at the other end of the wire exploded into indignant vituperation. Then silence. The Half Way operator had done his best—his all. He ran out upon the platform. The electric locomotive had disappeared behind the woods, but the roar of its wheels and the shrill voice of its siren echoed back along the line.
The sound faded into insignificance. The operator went back into his hut and stayed close by the telephone instrument for the next ten minutes to learn the worst.
If the operator’s nerves were tense, what about those of Tom Swift and his chum? Ned staggered to the door and clung to Tom’s arm. He shrilled into the latter’s ear:
“Shall we jump?”
“I don’t see any soft spots,” returned Tom, grimly. “There aren’t any life nets along this line.”
Ned Newton was frightened, and with good reason. But if his chum was equally terrified he did not show it. He continued to lean from the open door to peer down the grade as the Hercules 0001 drove on.
Around curve after curve they flew. It entered Ned’s tortured mind that if his chum had wanted speed, he was getting it now! He realized that two miles a minute was a mere bagatelle to the pace now accomplished by the runaway locomotive.
CHAPTER XX
THE RESULT
As Ned Newton, fumbling at the controls when he saw the fallen tree across the tracks, had jammed the brakes, the station master at Hammon, at the bottom of this long grade on the Hendrickton & Pas Alos, had stepped out to the blackboard in the barnlike waiting room and scrawled with a bit of chalk:
“No. 28—Westbound—due 3:38 is 15 m. late.”
The fact, thus given to the general public or to such of it as might be interested, averted what would have been a terrible catastrophe.
The fast express was late. When the babbling voice of the Half Way operator over the telephone warned Hammon of the coming of the runaway electric locomotive, there was time to shift switches at the head of the yard so that, when Number Twenty-eight came roaring in, she was shunted on to a far track and flagged for a stop before she hit the bumper.
Thirty seconds later, from the west, the Hercules 0001 roared down the grade and shot into the cleared west track in a halo of smoke and dust. Speed! No runaway had ever traveled faster and kept the rails. The story of the incident was embalmed in railroad history, and no history is so full of vivid incident as that of the rail.
When the first relay of excited railroad men reached the electric locomotive after it had stopped on the long level, even Ned Newton had pulled himself together and could look out upon the world with some measure of calmness. Tom Swift was making certain notes and draughting a curious little diagram upon a page of his notebook.
“What happened to you, Mr. Swift?” was the demand of the first arrival.
“Oh, my foot slipped,” said the young inventor, and they got nothing more out of him than that.
But to Ned, after the crowd had gone, the inventor said:
“Ned, my boy, they used to say that necessity was the mother of invention. Therefore a loaf of bread was considered the maternal parent of the locomotive. I’ve got one that will beat that.”
“Whew!” gasped Ned. “How can you? I haven’t got my breath back yet.”
“It is peril that is the mother of invention,” Tom went on, still jotting down his notes. “Believe me! that jolt gave me a new idea—an important idea. Suppose that operator at Half Way had been out back somewhere, and had not seen or heard us flash by?”
“Well, suppose he had? What’s the answer?” sighed Ned.
“Like enough we would have rammed something down here.”
“And I hardly understand even now why we didn’t do just that,” muttered his chum, with a shake of his head.
“Wake up, Ned! It’s all over,” laughed Tom. “While it was happening I admit I was guessing just as hard as you were about the finish. But—”
“Your recovery is better,” grumbled his friend. “I’m scared yet.”
“And it might happen again—”
“No—not—ever!” exclaimed Ned. “I shall never touch those controllers again. I’ll drive your airscout, or your fastest automobile, or anything like that. But me and this electric locomotive have parted company for good. Yes, sir!”
“All right. It wasn’t your fault. It might happen to any motor-engineer. And the very fact that it can happen has given me my idea. I tell you that danger is the mother of invention.”
/>
“As far as I am concerned, it can be father and grandparents into the bargain,” Ned declared, with a smile.
“Wake up!” cried his friend again. “I have got a dandy idea. I wouldn’t have missed that trip for anything.”
“You are crazy,” interrupted Ned. “Suppose we had bumped something?”
“But we didn’t bump anything, except my brain tank. An idea bumped it, I tell you. I am going to eliminate any such peril as that here-after.”
“You mean you are going to make it impossible for this locomotive ever to slide down such a hill again if the brakes won’t work? Humph! Meanwhile I will go out and make the nearest water-fall begin to run upward.”
“Don’t scoff. I do not mean just what you mean.”
“I bet you don’t!”
“But although I cannot be sure that a locomotive will never again fall downhill,” said Tom patiently, “I’m going to fix it so that warning need not be given by some operator along the line. The engineer must be able to send warning of his accident, both up and down the road.”
“Huh? How are you going to do that?” demanded Ned.
“Wireless telephone. I may make some improvements on the present models; but it is practicable. It has been used on submarines and cruisers, and lately its practicability has been proved in the forestry service.
“Every one of these electric locomotives I turn out will be supplied with wireless sets. The expense of making certain telegraph offices along the line into receiving stations will be small. I am going to take that up with Mr. Bartholomew at once. And I am going to fix these brake controls so that nobody need ball them up again.”
If, out of such a desperate adventure, Tom could bring to fruition really worthwhile improvements in relation to his invention, Ned acknowledged the value of the incident. Just the same, he had a personal objection to having any part in a similar experience.
He was brave, but he could not forget danger. Tom seemed to throw the effect of that terrible ride off his mind almost instantly. Ned dreamed of it at night!
However, from that time things seemed to go with a rush. Mr. Bartholomew approved of the young inventor’s suggestion regarding the use of the wireless telephone as a method of averting a certain quality of danger in the use of the proposed monster locomotive. The railroad man was convinced that Tom’s ideas were finally to culminate in success, and he was ready to spend money, much money, in pushing on the work.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 321