Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout; Or The Speediest Car on the Road Read online

  CHAPTER II

  MR. DAMON'S STEERING

  Tom Swift was a lad of action, and his quickness in hurrying out toinvestigate what had happened when he was explaining about his newbattery, was characteristic of him. Those of my readers who know him,through having read the previous books of this series, need not be toldthis, but you who, perhaps, are just making his acquaintance, may careto know a little more about him.

  As told in my first book, "Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle" the younginventor lived with his father, Barton Swift, a widower, in the town ofShopton, New York. Mr. Swift was also an inventor of note.

  In my initial volume of this series, Tom became possessed of amotor-cycle in a peculiar way. It was sold to him by a Mr. WakefieldDamon, a wealthy gentleman who was unfortunate in riding it. On hisspeedy machine, which Tom improved by several inventions, he had anumber of adventures. The principal one was being attacked by a numberof bad men, known as the "Happy Harry Gang," who wished to obtainpossession of a valuable turbine patent model belonging to Mr. Swift.Tom was taking it to a lawyer, when he was waylaid, and chloroformed.Later he traced the gang, and, with the assistance of Mr. Damon andEradicate Sampson, an aged colored man who made a living for himselfand his mule, Boomerang, by doing odd jobs, the lad found the thievesand recovered a motor-boat which had been stolen. But the men got away.

  In the second volume, called "Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat," Tom boughtat auction the boat stolen by, and recovered from, the thieves, andproceeded to improve it. While he was taking his father out on a cruisefor Mr. Swift's health, the Happy Harry Gang made a successful attemptto steal some valuable inventions from the Swift house. Tom started totrace them, and incidentally he raced and beat Andy Foger, a richbully. On their way down the lake, after the robbery, Tom, his fatherand Ned Newton, Tom's chum, saw a man hanging from the trapeze of ablazing balloon over Lake Carlopa. The balloonist was Mr. John Sharpand he was rescued by Tom in a thrilling fashion. In his motor-boat,Tom had much pleasure, not the least of which was taking out a younglady named Miss Mary Nestor, whose acquaintance he had made afterstopping her runaway horse, which his bicycle had frightened. Tom'sassociation with Miss Nestor soon ripened into something deeper thanmere friendship.

  It developed that Mr. Sharp, whom Tom had saved from the burningballoon, was an aeronaut of note, and had once planned to build anairship. After his recovery from his thrilling experience, he mentionedthe matter to Mr. Swift and his son, with whom he took up hisresidence. This fitted right in with Tom's ideas, and soon father, sonand the balloonist were constructing the Red Cloud, as they named theirairship. It was finally completed, as related in "Tom Swift and HisAirship," made a successful trial trip, and won a prize. It was plannedto make a longer journey, and Tom, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon agreed to gotogether. Mr. Damon was an odd individual, who was continuouslyblessing some part of his anatomy, his clothing or some inanimateobject but, for all that, he was a fine man.

  The night before Tom and his friends started off in their airship, theShopton Bank vault was blown open and seventy-five thousand dollars wastaken. Tom and his friends did not know of this, but, no sooner had theyoung inventor, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon sailed away, than the policearrived at Mr. Swift's house to arrest them. They were charged with therobbery, and with having sailed away with the booty.

  It appeared that Andy Foger said he had seen Tom hanging around thebank the night of the robbery, with a bag of burglar tools in hispossession. Search was immediately begun for the airship, the occupantsof which were, meanwhile, speeding on.

  Tom and his two friends had trouble. They were nearly burned up in aforest fire, and were fired upon by a crowd of people with rifles, who,reading of the bank robbery and the reward offered for the capture ofthe thieves, hoped to bring down the airship. The fact that they werefired upon caused Tom and the two aeronauts to descend to make aninvestigation, and for the first time they learned of the bank theft.How they got track of the real robbers, took the sheriff with them inthe airship, and raided the gang will be found set down at length inthe book. Also how Tom administered well-deserved thrashing to AndyFoger.

  Mr. Swift did not accompany his son in the airship, and when asked whyhe did not care to make the trip, said he was working on a new type ofsubmarine boat, which he hoped to enter in the government trials, towin a prize. In the fourth volume of the series, called "Tom Swift andhis Submarine," you may read how successful Mr. Swift was.

  When the submarine, called the Advance, was finished, the party made atrip to recover three hundred thousand dollars in gold from a sunkentreasure ship, off the coast of Uruguay, South America. They sailedbeneath the seas for many miles, and were in great peril at times. Onereason for this was that a rival firm of submarine builders got wind ofthe treasure, and tried to get ahead of the Swifts in recovering it.How Tom and his friends succeeded in their quest, how they nearlyperished at the bottom of the sea, how they were captured by a foreignwar vessel, and sentenced to death, how they fought with a school ofgiant sharks and how they blew up the wreck to recover the money is alltold of in the book.

  On their return to civilization with the gold, Mr. Swift, Tom, andtheir friends deposited the money in the Shopton Bank, where Ned Newtonworked. Ned was a bright lad, but had not been advanced as rapidly ashe deserved, and Tom knew this. He asked his father to speak to thepresident, Mr. Pendergast, in Ned's behalf, and, as a result the ladwas made assistant cashier, for the request of a man who controlled athree hundred thousand dollar deposit was not to be despised.

  In building the submarine Tom and his father rented a large cottage onthe New Jersey seacoast, but, on returning from their treasure-questthey went back to Shopton, leaving the submarine at the boathouse ofthe shore cottage, which was near the city of Atlantis. That was in thefall of the year, and all that winter the young inventor had been busyon many things, not the least of which was his storage battery. It wasnow spring, and seeing the item in the paper, about the touring clubprize for an electric auto, had given him a new idea.

  But all thoughts of electric cars, and everything else, were drivenfrom the mind of the young man, when, with his father, he rushed out tosee the cause of the crash on the roof of the Swift homestead.

  "There's something up there, Tom," called his father, as he splashed onthrough the rain.

  "That's right," added his son. "And somebody, too, to judge by the fussthey're making."

  "Maybe the house has been struck by lightning!" suggested the agedinventor.

  "No, the storm isn't severe enough for that; and, besides, if the househad been struck you'd hear Mrs. Baggert yelling, Dad. She--"

  At that moment a woman's voice cried out:

  "Mr. Swift! Tom! Where are you? Something dreadful has happened!"

  "There she goes!" remarked Mr. Swift, as he splashed into a mud puddle.

  "Bless my deflection rudder!" suddenly cried a voice from the flat roofof the Swift house. "Hello! I say, is anyone down there?"

  "Yes, we are," answered Tom. "Is that you, Mr. Damon?"

  "Bless my collar button! It certainly is."

  "Where's Mr. Sharp? I don't hear him."

  "Oh, I'm here all right," answered the balloonist. "I'm trying to getthe airship clear of the chimney. Mr. Damon--"

  "Yes, I steered wrong!" interrupted the odd man. "Bless my liver pin,but it was so dark I couldn't see, and when that clap of thunder came Ishifted the deflection rudder instead of the lateral one, and tried toknock over your chimney."

  "Are either of you hurt?" asked Mr. Swift anxiously.

  "No, not at all," replied Mr. Sharp. "We were moving slowly, ready fora landing."

  "Is the airship damaged?" inquired Tom.

  "I don't know. Not much, I guess," was the answer of the aeronaut."I've stopped the engine, and I don't like to start it again until Ican see what shape we're in."

  "I'll come up, with Mr. Jackson," called Tom, and he hastily summonedGarret Jackson, an engineer, who had been in the service of Mr. Swiftfor many
years. Together they proceeded to the roof by a stairway thatled to a scuttle.

  "Is anyone killed?" asked Mrs. Baggert, as Tom hurried up the stairs."Don't tell me there is, Tom!"

  "Well, I don't have to tell you, for no one is," replied the younginventor with a laugh. "It's all right. The airship tried to collidewith the chimney, that's all."

  He was soon on the large, flat roof of the dwelling, and, with the aidof lanterns he, the engineer, and Mr. Sharp made a hasty examination.

  "Anything wrong?" inquired Mr. Damon, looking out from the cabin of theRed Cloud where he had taken refuge after the crash, and to get out ofthe wet.

  "Not much," answered Tom. "One of the forward planes is smashed, but wecan rise by means of the gas, and float down. Is all clear, Mr. Sharp?"

  "All clear," replied the balloonist, for the airship had now beenwheeled back from the entanglement with the chimney.

  "Then here we go!" cried Tom, as he and the aeronaut entered the craft,while Mr. Jackson descended through the scuttle.

  There came a fiercer burst to the storm, and, amid a series of dazzlinglightning flashes and the muttering of thunder, the airship rose fromthe roof. Tom switched on the search-light, and, starting the bigpropellers, guided the craft skillfully toward the big shed where itwas housed when not in use.

  With the grace of a bird it turned about in the air, and settled to theground. It was the work of but a few minutes to run it into the shed.Then they all started for the house.

  "Bless my umbrella! How it rains!" cried Mr. Damon, as he splashed onthrough numerous puddles. "We got back just in time, Mr. Sharp."

  "Where did you go?" asked the lad.

  "Why we took a flight of about fifty miles and stopped at my house inWaterfield for supper. Were you anxious about us?"

  "A little when it began to storm," replied Tom.

  "Anything new since we left?" asked Mr. Sharp, for it was the custom ofhimself, or some of his friends, to take little trips in the airship.They thought no more of it than many do of going for a short spin in anautomobile.

  "Yes, there is something new," said Mr. Swift, as the party, alldrenched now, reached the broad veranda.

  "Bless my gaiters!" cried Mr. Damon. "What is it? I hope the HappyHarry gang hasn't robbed you again; nor Berg and his men tried to takethat treasure away from us, after we worked so hard to get it from thewreck."

  "No, it isn't that," replied Mr. Swift. "The truth is that Tom thinkshe has invented a storage battery that will revolutionize matters. He'sgoing to build an electric automobile, he says."

  "I am," declared the lad, as the others looked at him, "and it will bethe speediest one you ever saw, too!"