Читать книгу Tom Swift and his Flying Boat or The Castaways of the Giant Iceberg - Howard R Garis - Страница 3
ОглавлениеAN IDEA AND A FORTUNE
“I am sure we can build such a flying boat, father.”
“Humph! I wish I had your confidence, Tom,” chuckled Mr. Barton Swift, the old inventor.
His son laughed, too. “It isn’t confidence you lack,” he said. “It is just that you are too cautious to seem optimistic.”
“Have it your own way,” rejoined his father. “Just the same, a speed boat for the air, land, and sea that will do all you suggest is something to consider fearfully. Nothing to compare to it has ever yet been launched.”
“But it will be launched,” cried Tom Swift eagerly. “Somebody will put it into the air before we know it. Why not get ahead of the rest of the smart folks? Why not put out a flying boat that will make all their eyes bug out?”
“Even your slang gets ahead of me, Tom,” said his father mildly. “Just why do you wish to strain the optic nerves of your competitors?”
But Tom Swift only laughed. He knew just how young his father’s mind remained, even if he was a semi-invalid at times and his body was weakened by age and hard work.
“There is a bunch of rich men, I understand, who mean to build a flying boat to go hunting in up toward the Arctic Circle next summer. There are others that believe the mystery of the Antarctic can only be revealed through the use of such a craft. The interior of Africa, around Lake Tanganyika and the other great lakes can be properly explored only by the use of some such machine. Central South America can be reached more easily from the Amazon and its great branches than by any other means. Without a flying boat, how may one fly over the falls and escape the dangers of the rapids?”
“Good! Good!” exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift. “I see you have been thinking this thing out, at least. A great many people have excuses for what they want to do; but you, Tom, have a reason. What else?”
Tom Swift laughed again. He was a boyish fellow, in spite of all his experiences of the past few years; and a boy finds it difficult at most times to take older people into his confidence, especially about his dreams and hopes.
“I do not know that my suggestion should seem an impossibility,” Tom said, soberly. “See what the Swift Construction Company has done in the past. Of course, I am counting on your help, father, to carry such a thing to a successful conclusion.”
“You actually talk as though you had conceived a plan and would put it into effect, Tom!” cried his father.
“I don’t know but I have—and will,” said Tom, smiling once more. “At any rate, I have been revolving the scheme in my head for a long time. I admit it. A flying boat, as the story-book fellows write now, has ‘intrigued’ my interest. I’m coocoo about it, to use Ned Newton’s slang.”
“So you lay your knowledge of the argot to Ned?” laughed Mr. Swift. “But this flying boat?”
“A lot has been accomplished by other people. We would not be the first in the field, by any means. But I believe I have some ideas about such an invention that would put us ahead of everybody else. And that is the main thing.”
“The main thing, I should say, would be to have a working hypothesis of the idea in question,” observed Barton Swift dryly. “What would you build a flying boat for? To what particular use is it to be put? Therefore, in making plans for the boat, they must fit the needs of the craft as devised.
“In other words, Tom, what in the world do you want a flying boat for? You have your air scout, your aerial warship that you sold to the Government during the war, your air glider which as yet has not been equaled, your sky racer, and your old Red Cloud which scarcely any newer airship marvel has surpassed. You have been up in the air enough, it seems to me. Why not tackle the practical inventions of peace, as I pointed out in your last marvel, the electric locomotive?”
“Give me an idea,” grumbled Tom. “What shall I build—a new plough? Huh!”
“Say, Mist’ Tom! tells yo’ what,” burst into the controversy an altogether unexpected voice.
The Swifts had been talking on the side piazza of their house near the works of the Swift Construction Company at Shopton. Just inside one of the rear windows a grizzled old colored man was busy preparing vegetables for dinner.
“I tells yo’ what!” repeated Eradicate Sampson, the old serving man who had been with the Swifts for years and considered himself quite one of the family. “I tells yo’ what! Yo’ want to invent somethin’ practical like yo’ fader says, yo’ make a machine that’ll scoop the eyes out o’ ’taters widout wastin’ none o’ de meat. Dat wot yo’ do. Den yo’ sho’ nuff do somethin’ wuth while.”
Mr. Barton Swift burst into a laugh, as he almost always did when Eradicate Sampson, or “Rad” for short, made one of his suggestions. Even Tom, earnest as he was about the flying boat, grinned.
“I’ll take that up some day and fix it for you, Rad,” the young fellow said.
“Hope yo’ does it ’fore I done git all dis bag of ’taters used up. Dey is sho’ right eye-y. Sho’ is!”
“If you want to carp and criticize at ‘English as she is spoke,’ there’s your chance, father,” grumbled Tom. “Look after Rad. But this flying boat idea—a craft that will sail on the water, roll on the ground, and fly through the air——”
“Old stuff, Tom,” Mr. Swift answered bruskly. “There are very good inventions of that nature already.”
“Quite true,” admitted Tom, but not at all discouraged. “But none of them so far built would satisfy me if I were the inventor and builder.”
“Ah-ha!”
“There are faults in every one already launched. I bet there are faults in all those now under construction, no matter how much money there may be behind the invention. I am going after the perfect flying boat, or I’ll not build any.”
“Well? Tell me how you will overcome the rough-sea obstacle, for instance?” asked the very practical Mr. Swift. “That has been puzzling the flying boat folks ever since the beginning. It is unsafe to descend in a heavy sea, therefore they dare not take long voyages from land.”
“I mean to overcome that very thing if I tackle the thing at all.”
“You speak very confidently, my son,” said his father, looking at Tom seriously.
“I have thought about the invention for some time.”
Mr. Barton Swift threw up his hands in mock despair.
“Incurable!” he cried. “Once you get your teeth set in a thing, Tom, there is no shaking you loose.”
“I come honestly enough by that trait of character,” said Tom, with a grin. “They say I’m a chip off the old block.”
He sat up suddenly in his reclining chair and stared toward the front of the house. Idly at first he had heard the noise of a motor-car arriving before the house. It had stopped there. Mr. Swift had not appeared to notice it at all, but Tom suddenly overheard voices.
“Yes, sah. Dey is at home, but dey mebbe is engaged on ’portant business,” said a sonorous voice that could belong to nobody save Koku, Tom’s giant servant whom the young inventor had brought with him some years before from far parts, and who had served him well and faithfully ever since.
“I isn’t sure, sah. But I go see,” went on the important sounding Koku.
“Listen to dat giant!” grumbled old Rad Sampson. “Jes’ to hear him, yo’d think he was bossin’ dis hyer fambly. Sho’ nuff! Huh!”
The ancient colored man and the half-civilized Koku were sworn enemies up to a certain point. Both professed to scorn the other’s efficiency and abilities. And both usurped the authority of speaking for either Tom or his father on almost any occasion.
But now Koku had tried the patience of the visitor. Overtopping the giant’s serious tones came the sharper and more excited voice that Tom immediately recognized. And what the voice said startled even the placid Mr. Swift.
“Tom Swift! Tom Swift!” exclaimed the visitor. “Bless my telescope, Tom Swift, but I must see you! I must see you at once! Tom Swift!”
“Ho!” cried Tom, starting up. “Ho, Koku! Bring Mr. Damon right out here.”
Hearing the young inventor’s voice, Mr. Wakefield Damon waited for nothing more. He rushed around the corner of the house, appearing in an excited and a rather disheveled state upon the side porch where the two Swifts were sitting.
“Bless my decrepit extremities!” exclaimed the emphatic gentleman, thus referring to his own feet as they stumbled over a low ottoman and a rumpled mat. “I’m so excited I can’t even walk straight. It’s the greatest—well, how-do, Barton Swift? And you, Tom—how are you?”
Both his hosts welcomed the eccentric Wakefield Damon warmly. He was a good friend.
“What good wind has brought you here, Damon?” asked Mr. Swift, giving the visitor his hand.
“No such element as wind,” declared Mr. Damon, with his usual energy. “Air, fire and water—the three principal elements. Nothing like air. It’s frozen water has brought me here, I reckon,” and he burst into a great laugh at his own fantasy. “Ice has brought me here, not wind.”
“I heard your motor-car,” said Tom smiling. “You don’t mean to say you have invented a way of running a car with ice for fuel?”
“Nothing like that! Nothing like that!” cried Mr. Damon. “The gasoline people still rob me. But listen! I’ve got ice in my head—and some brains, I hope,” he added. “At any rate, I know where to come for help when I get stuck in anything.”
“You bring us a problem, do you?” asked Mr. Swift. “Well, Damon, what is it?”
“I have got to have Tom’s help. I want him to take a journey with me.”
“A journey—just now—when I’ve so much on my hands?” demanded the young inventor, in considerable doubt.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Mr. Damon quickly. “I’ve got to go to Iceland. There’s money in it——”
“Money in Iceland?” interrupted Tom.
“So they tell me. And a lot of it is mine,” returned the excited visitor. “I want you to go there with me, Tom, to get a fortune. A fortune, boy! It will pay us big.”
