United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It took weeks of hard work to do this, and Tom and Ned, with Mr. Damon occasionally for company, remained almost constantly at the plant. But finally the cannon was completed, the rifling was done over again to correct any imperfections, and the manager said: "You cannon is completed, Mr. Swift. I want to congratulate you on it. Never have we done such a stupendous piece of work.
"Come on!" yelled Tom, pulling on the leading rope. "Bless my porous plaster!" cried Mr. Damon. "You'd better hurry, Tom! Those wild horses are almost on us!" "I'm trying to hurry!" replied the young inventor, "but this mule won't come. Ned, get behind and shove, will you?" "Not much! I don't want to be kicked." "Beat him! Strike him! Wait until I get a club!" yelled San Pedro.
Three of the lighter weight mules, who carried small burdens, were quickly relieved of them, and mounting these steeds in preference to the ones they had been riding since they took the trail, Tom, Ned and Mr. Damon dropped back to try and hold off the enemy. They had not far to ride nor long to wait.
Tom carefully inspected the Whizzer which was the name of Mr. Fenwick's airship, and, after some difficulties, succeeded in getting the electric craft in shape to make a flight. Tom, Mr. Damon and Mr. Fenwick started to make a trip to Cape May in the Whizzer, but were caught in a terrific storm, and blown out to sea. The wind became a hurricane, the airship was disabled, and wrecked in mid-air.
"Ride back alone, through these woods? Never! The smugglers might catch me, and I'm too valuable a man to go that way! I'll take a chance in the airship." Ned busied himself over the wizard camera, which had been stored away, and Mr. Period went with the young bank clerk to look after the apparatus. Meanwhile Tom and Koku saw to it that the Falcon was ready for a quick flight, Mr. Damon and Mr.
"Look out! They're going to shoot!" cried Mr. Damon. "Bless my gunpowder! can't you stop them some way or other, Mr. Detective?" "The only way is by firing first," answered Mr. Trivett, "and I don't want to hurt them. Guess I'll fire in the air again." He did, and the guards halted.
Tom doubted this, after a look at the charred section, but he easily understood the dislike of the men, upon whose heads he had heaped coals of fire, to ride with him and Mr. Damon. So Field and Melling were left standing in the road near their stranded car, which, but for Tom Swift's prompt action, would have been only a heap of ruins.
The friendship of Damon and Pythias was a marriage in the best sense, though it concerned two men. The possibilities of intellectual union between a man and a woman are quite the same. This is deathless in so far as it reflects the spiritual ideals of the universe not more so. All else is illusion of short duration and vanishes in thin air.
"And we've got to hunt until we find it; is that the idea?" asked Mr. Parker. "Or until we see the phantom," added Tom, in a low voice. "Bless my topknot!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "You don't mean to say you expect to see that ghost; do you Tom?" "Perhaps," answered the young inventor, and he did not add something else of which he was thinking. For Tom had a curious theory regarding the phantom.
Damon, as he saw a series of calculations on some sheets of paper lying on Tom's desk. "That's where I worked out how much faster sound traveled in hydrogen gas than in the ordinary atmosphere," was the answer. "It goes about four times as fast, or nearly four thousand two hundred feet a second. You remember the rule, I suppose.
Word Of The Day