TRYING THE NEW GUN
While Tom Swift is thus absorbed in thinking about a chance to hunt
elephants, we will take the opportunity to tell you a little more
about him, and then go on with the story.
Many of you already know the young inventor, but those who do not
may be interested in hearing that he is a young American lad, full
of grit and ginger, who lives with his aged father in the town of
Shopton, in New York State. Our hero was first introduced to the
public in the book, "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle."
In that volume it was related how Tom bought a motor-cycle from a
Mr. Wakefield Damon, of Waterford. Mr. Damon was an eccentric
individual, who was continually blessing himself, some one else, or
something belonging to him. His motor-cycle tried to climb a tree
with him, and that was why he sold it to Tom. The two thus became
acquainted, and their friendship grew from year to year.
After many adventures on his motor-cycle Tom got a motor-boat, and
had some exciting times in that. One of the things he and his father
and his chum, Ned Newton, did, was to rescue, from a burning balloon
that had fallen into Lake Carlopa, an aeronaut named John Sharp.
Later Tom and Mr. Sharp built an airship called the Red Cloud, and
with Mr. Damon and some others had a series of remarkable fights.
In the Red Cloud they got on the track of some bank robbers, and
captured them, thus foiling the plans of Andy Foger, a town bully,
and one of Tom's enemies, and putting to confusion the plot of Mr.
Foger, Andy's father.
After many adventures in the air Tom and his friends, in a submarine
boat, invented by Mr. Swift, went under the ocean for sunken
treasure and secured a large part of it.
It was not long after this that Tom conceived the idea of a powerful
electric car, which proved, to be the speediest of the road, and in
it he won a great race, and saved from ruin a bank in which his
father and Mr. Damon were interested.
The sixth book of the series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Wireless
Message," tells how, in testing a new electric airship, which a
friend of Mr. Damon's had invented, Tom, the inventor and Mr. Damon
were lost on an island in the middle of the ocean. There they found
some castaways, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. Nestor, parents of Mary
Nestor of Shopton, a girl of whom Tom was quite fond.
Tom Swift, after his arrival home, went on an expedition among a
gang of men known as the "Diamond Makers" who were hidden in the
Rocky Mountains. He was accompanied by Mr. Barcoe Jenks, one of the
castaways of Earthquake Island. They found the diamond makers, and
had some surprising adventures, barely escaping with their lives.
This did not daunt Tom, however, and he once more started off on an
expedition in his airship the Red Cloud to Alaska, amid the caves of
ice. He was searching for a valley of gold, and though he and his
friends found it, they came to grief. The Fogers, father and son,
tried to steal the gold from them, and, failing in that, incited the
Eskimos against our friends. There was a battle, but the forces of
nature were even more to be dreaded than the terrible savages.
The ice cave, in which the Red Cloud was stored, collapsed, crushing
the gallant craft, and burying it out of sight forever under
thousand of tons of the frozen bergs.
After a desperate journey Tom and his friends reached civilization,
with a large supply of gold. Tom regretted very much the destruction
of the airship, but he at once set to work on another--a monoplane
this time, instead of a combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon.
This new craft he called the Humming-Bird and it was a "sky racer"
of terrific speed. In it, as we have said, Tom brought a specialist
to operate on his father, when, because of a broken railroad bridge,
the physician could not otherwise have gotten to Shopton. He and Tom
traveled through the air at the rate of over one hundred miles an
hour. Later, Tom took part in a big race for a ten-thousand-dollar
prize, and won, defeating Andy Foger, and a number of well-known
"bird-men" who used biplanes and monoplanes of a more or less
familiar type.
The government became interested in Tom's craft, the Humming-Bird,
and, as told in the ninth book of this series, Tom Swift and His Sky
Racer, they secured some rights in the invention.
And now Tom, who had done nothing for several months following the
great race--that is, nothing save to work on his new rifle--Tom, we
say, sighed for new adventures.
"Well, Tom, what is on your mind?" asked his father at the supper
table that evening. "What is worrying you?"
"Nothing is worrying me, Dad."
"You are thinking of something. I can see that. Are you afraid your
electric rifle won't work as well as you hope, when Ned comes over
to try it?"
"No, it isn't that, Dad. But I may as well tell you, I guess. I've
been reading in the paper about a big elephant hunt in Africa, and
I--"
"That's enough, Tom! You needn't say any more," interrupted Mr.
Swift. "I can see which way the wind is blowing. You want to go to
Africa with your new rifle."
"Well, Dad, not exactly--that is--"
"Now, Tom, you needn't deny it," and Mr. Swift laughed. "Well, I
don't blame you a bit. You have been rather idle of late."
"I would like to go, Dad," admitted the young inventor, "only I'd
never think of it while you weren't well."
"Don't worry about me, Tom. Of course I will be lonesome while you
are gone, but don't let that stand in the way. If you want to go to
Africa, you may start to-morrow, and take your new rifle with you."
"The rifle part would be all right, Dad, but if I went I'd want to
take an airship along, and it will take me some little time to
finish the Black Hawk, as I have named my new craft."
"Well, there's no special hurry, is there?" asked Mr. Swift. "The
elephants in Africa are likely to stay there for some time. If you
want to go, why don't you get right to work on the Black Hawk and
make the trip? I'd like to go myself."
"I wish you would, Dad," exclaimed Tom eagerly.
"No, son, I couldn't think of it. I want to stay here and get well.
Then I am going to resume work on my wireless motor. Perhaps I'll
have it finished when you come back from Africa with an airship load
of elephants' tusks."
"Perhaps," admitted the young inventor. "Well, Dad, I'll think of
it. But now I'm going after my rifle, and--"
Tom was interrupted by a ring of the front-door bell, and Mrs.
Baggert, the housekeeper, who was almost like a mother to the youth,
went to answer it.
"It's Ned Newton, I guess," murmured Tom, and, a little later, his
chum entered the room.
"Oh, I guess I'm early," said Ned. "Haven't you had supper yet,
Tom?"
"Yes, we're just finished. Come on out and we'll try the gun."
"And practice shooting elephants," added Mr. Swift with a laugh, as
he mentioned to Ned the latest idea of Tom.
"Say! That would be great!" cried the bank clerk. "I wish I could
go!"
"Come along!" invited Tom cordially. "We'll have more fun than we
did in the caves of ice," for Ned had gone on the voyage to Alaska.
The two youths went out to the shed where the rifle gallery had been
built. The new electric weapon was out there, and Eradicate Sampson,
the colored man, who was a sort of servant and man-of-all-work about
the Swift household, had set up the scarecrow figure at the end of
the gallery.
"Now we'll try some shots," said Tom, as he took the gun out of the
case. "Just turn on a few more lights, will you, Mr. Jackson," and
the engineer, who was employed by Tom and his father to aid them in
their inventive work, did as requested.
The gallery was now brilliantly illuminated, with the reflectors
throwing the beams on the big stuffed figure, which, save for a
face, looked very much like a human being, standing at the end of
the gallery.
"I don't suppose you want to go down there and hold it, while I
shoot at it; do you, Rad?" asked Tom jokingly, as he prepared the
electric rifle for use.
"No indeedy, I don't!" cried Eradicate. "Yo'-all will hab t' scuse
me, Massa Tom. I think I'll be goin' now."
"What's your hurry?" asked Ned, as he saw the colored man hastily
preparing to leave the improvised gallery.
"I spects I'd better fro' down some mo' straw fo' a bed fo' my mule
Boomerang!" exclaimed Eradicate, as he hastily slid out of the door,
and shut it after him.
"Rad is nervous," remarked Tom. "He doesn't like this gun. Well, it
certainly does great execution."
"How does it work'" asked Ned, as he looked at the curious gun. The
electric weapon was not unlike an ordinary heavy rifle in appearance
save that the barrel was a little longer, and the stock larger in
every way. There were also a number of wheels, levers, gears and
gages on the stock.
"It works by electricity," explained Tom.
"That is, the force comes from a powerful current of stored
electricity."
"Oh, then you have storage batteries in the stock?"
"Not exactly. There are no batteries, but the current is a sort of
wireless kind. It is stored in a cylinder, just as compressed air or
gases are stored, and can be released as I need it."
"And when it's all gone, what do you do?"
"Make more power by means of a small dynamo."
"And does it shoot lead bullets?"
"Not at all. There are no bullets used."
"Then how does it kill?"
"By means of a concentrated charge of electricity which is shot from
the barrel with great force. You can't see it, yet it is there. It's
just as if you concentrated a charge of electricity of five thousand
volts into a small globule the size of a bullet. That flies through
space, strikes the object aimed at and--well, we'll see what it does
in a minute. Mr. Jackson, just put that steel plate up in front of
the scarecrow; will you?"
The engineer proceeded to put into place a section of steel armor-plate
before the stuffed figure.
"You don't mean to say you're going to shoot through that, do you?"
asked Ned in surprise.
"Surely. The electric bullets will pierce anything. They'll go
through a brick wall as easily as the x-rays do. That's one valuable
feature of my rifle. You don't have to see the object you aim at. In
fact you can fire through a house, and kill something on the other
side."
"I should think that would be dangerous."
"It would be, only I can calculate exactly, by means of an automatic
arrangement, just how far the charge of electricity will go. It
stops short just at the limit of the range, and is not effective
beyond that. Otherwise, if I did not limit it and if I fired at the
scarecrow, through the piece of steel, and the bullet hit the
figure, it would go on, passing through whatever else was in the
way, until its power was lost. I use the term 'bullet,' though as I
said, it isn't properly one."
"By Jove, Tom, it certainly is a dangerous weapon!"
"Yes, the range-limit idea is a new one. That's what I've been
working on lately. There are other features of the gun which I'll
explain later, particularly the power it has to shoot out luminous
bars of light. But now we'll see what it will do to the image."
Tom took his place at the end of the range, and began to adjust some
valves and levers. In spite of the fact that the gun was larger than
an ordinary rifle, it was not as heavy as the United States Army
weapon.
Tom aimed at the armor-plate, and, by means of an arrangement on the
rifle, he could tell exactly when he was pointing at the scarecrow,
even though he could not see it.
"Here she goes!" he suddenly exclaimed.
Ned watched his chum. The young inventor pressed a small button at
the side of the rifle barrel, about where the trigger should have
been. There was no sound, no smoke, no flame and not the slightest
jar.
Yet as Ned watched he saw the steel plate move slightly. The next
instant the scarecrow figure seemed to fly all to pieces. There was
a shower of straw, rags and old clothes, which fell in a shapeless
heap at the end of the range.
"Say. I guess you did for that fellow, all right!" exclaimed Ned.
"It looks so," admitted Tom, with a note of pride in his voice. "Now
we'll try another test."
As he laid aside his rifle in order to help Mr. Jackson shift the
steel plate there was a series of yells outside the shed.
"What's that?" asked Tom, in some alarm.
"Sounds like some one calling," answered Ned.
"It is," agreed Mr. Jackson. "Perhaps Eradicate's mule has gotten
loose. I guess we'd better--"
He did not finish, for the shouts increased in volume, and Tom and
Ned could hear some one yelling:
"I'll have the law on you for this! I'll have you arrested, Tom
Swift! What do you mean by trying to kill me? Where are you? Don't
try to hide away, now. You were trying to shoot me, and I'm not
going to have it!"
Some one pounded on the door of the shed.
"It's Barney Moker!" exclaimed Tom. "I wonder what can have
happened?"