JASON JACKS
Just for a moment or two Tom Swift wished he were in the motor cockpit
of the plane instead of in the passenger car with his father and his
friends. He had an idea he might so manipulate the controls as to cause
the falling plane to increase speed and keep on flying until a safe
landing could be made.
But in an instant this idea passed. Tom had full confidence in his
mechanician, and realized if Harry Meldrum could not prevent a fall Tom
himself could not, for Meldrum, taught in the Swift school of flying,
was a thoroughly competent and resourceful airman.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked his engineer through the tube.
“Oil pump has blown out a gasket! The engine is heating. It’s got to
stop soon and we’ll have to come down—in the lake, I guess,” was the
grim finish of the report.
“Well, I’ve landed in worse places,” remarked Tom.
“Is anything going to happen?” his father wanted to know.
“I’m afraid there is,” the young inventor answered. “We’re being forced
down. I thought everything was all right with the machinery, but you
never can tell.”
“Bless my accident insurance policy! Do you think we’ll go down right in
the water, Tom?” gasped Mr. Damon.
“It begins to look so,” was the reply. “But perhaps better there than on
land—there won’t be such a shock. The plane has floating compartments,
and so has this car—I had them built in as a precaution against water
landings. I don’t believe there will be any real danger.”
There was no doubt about it—the plane was gradually settling lower and
lower—ever coming nearer to the surface of Lake Carlopa.
“She’s slowing up, Tom,” remarked Ned, as he listened to the throbs and
pulsations of the motor above them.
“Yes, I’m afraid we’re in for it,” came the response. “Can’t you make
any emergency repairs, Meldrum?” he asked the mechanician.
“Bert’s trying, but it doesn’t seem of much use,” was the answer. Bert
Dodge was the assistant engineer, and fully as competent as his chief.
“This settles one thing,” remarked Tom, as he glanced out of the car
window. “On the next flight I’ll have a duplicate oiling system
installed.”
“Brace yourselves, everybody! We’re in for a ducking!” came the cry.
The next moment the big new aeroplane and its attached passenger car
plunged into Lake Carlopa with a mighty splash. For a moment it seemed
that they would be engulfed and all drowned before they could make
egress from the plane and car. But Meldrum had guided the machine down
on a long angle so that the water was struck a glancing blow. In effect,
the lower surface of the car and the tail of the plane slid along the
surface of the water for some distance. This neutralized some of the
force of the impact, and then, though the machine settled rather deeply
in the water, it did not sink. The air compartments prevented that.
However, help was at hand. A number of motor boats were out on the lake,
their occupants watching the trial flight of the new airline express.
When it was known that an accident had happened, these craft speeded to
the rescue. As soon as the boats drew near the men in the plane and
those in the car climbed outside and thence were taken off in the boats.
“Looks as if it was going to be a total loss, Tom,” said Mr. Damon
gloomily, as the craft settled lower and lower in the water.
“It’s bad enough,” Tom admitted, ruefully shaking his head, as the boat
that had taken him off circled about the _Falcon_, as Tom had christened
his first machine. “But even if she sinks to the bottom I believe I can
raise her. The lake isn’t very deep here.”
However, it was not quite as bad as that. The _Falcon_ was only partly
submerged, and there she lay, water-bound, in the lake. Her actions
decided Tom to install more air-tight compartments and make the car
lighter, which would insure its floating higher in case of another water
drop.
“Well, there’s nothing more we can do now,” decided the young inventor.
“If you’ll take me ashore, please,” he said to his rescuer, “I’ll make
arrangements for getting the _Falcon_ out.”
He gave orders to this effect as soon as he reached his shop, and when
Mr. Swift, with a dubious shake of his head said:
“I’m afraid this is a failure, Tom! It’s too much for you.” The young
inventor with a determined air answered:
“I’ve never given up anything yet, and I’m not going to begin now! I see
where I made some mistakes and I’m going to correct them.”
And when the plane and the car were raised and brought to shore—being
found to have suffered little damage—Tom started his reconstruction
work with more vim than before.
However, the accident, while it was not a serious one from a mechanical
standpoint, had a bad effect on Ned’s campaign to raise funds for
putting the airline express into actual service. True as it is that
nothing succeeds like success, nothing is more dampening to a money
campaign than failure. Capital seems very timid in the face of failure,
and deaf ears were turned to Ned’s urgent appeal to the public to buy
stock. For while Tom was working on the mechanical end, Ned looked after
the business interests.
“Well, Ned, how goes it?” asked the young inventor at the close of a
hard day’s work when Tom himself had been much cheered by the progress
he had made in lightening his passenger car and installing a dual oiling
system on the plane.
“It doesn’t go at all,” was the somewhat gloomy answer. “People seem
afraid to risk their money. If you could only make a successful flight,
Tom, or get some millionaire to invest about a hundred thousand dollars
without really seeing the thing fly, we’d be all right.”
“I think I’ll be more successful in the first proposition than in the
second,” replied Tom, with a smile. “I don’t know many millionaires who
are letting go of dollars in hundred thousand lots.”
“In fact, Tom, we’re almost at the end of our financial rope. We’ve got
just about enough to complete the improvements you have begun.”
“After that I’ll try another flight. If that succeeds I think public
confidence will be restored,” returned Tom. “If we fall again—well——”
“You’ll give up, I suppose,” finished Ned.
“Not at all!” was the quick reply. “You’ll find some other means of
financing the thing. This is going to succeed, Ned! I’m going to make
it! We’ll go from ocean to ocean by daylight!”
Tom banged his fist down on his desk with force enough to spill some ink
out of the bottle, and then, getting up from his chair, began putting on
his coat.
“Where are you going—out to hunt for a kind millionaire?” asked Ned.
“No; that’s your end of the job. I’m going for a ride with Mary,” was
the smiling reply. “I want to get some of the cobwebs out of my brain. I
can’t do any more now, and I promised Mary I’d take her for a spin in
the electric runabout. It’s working all right, I suppose?” he asked, for
Ned had been using that speedy machine in his financial campaign.
“Yes, it works well, Tom—faster than ever. And I hope things will take
a turn for the better to-morrow.”
“So do I. See you later,” and Tom was off to keep his appointment with
Mary Nestor.
Tom and Mary were riding along a quiet country road back of a little
village when Mary observed just ahead of them an old man driving a horse
hitched to a light carriage.
“Speaking of millionaires, Tom,” she said, “there goes one.”
“Where?” he asked.
“There! Jason Jacks. He has several millions, it’s said, but he holds on
to them. Father knows him.”
“Lucky boy!” exclaimed Tom. “I wish I were you, J. J.!”
“Well, I don’t!” came promptly from Mary. “If you were Jason Jacks, I
wouldn’t be out riding with you, Tom Swift!”
“Why not?” he demanded quizzically.
“Because he’s old, he hasn’t any teeth——”
“Well, you don’t want to be bitten, do you?” joked Tom.
“No, of course not. But he’s got a mean disposition, he’s homely——”
“Thanks!” interrupted Tom, with a laugh. “That’s an implied compliment,
I take it.”
“Take whatever you like,” laughed Mary.
“I’d like to take a few thousands from Millionaire Jason Jacks,”
retorted the young man. “Still, if you feel that way about him, Mary,
I’m just as glad to be what I am,” and Tom—well, it is affairs of no
outsider what he did just then.
The look which passed between him and Mary changed in a moment to a
glance of alarm as the girl pointed to the carriage ahead of them and
exclaimed:
“Oh, Tom! I believe that horse is running away!”
“I pretty near know it is!” was the answer, as Tom began to speed up the
electric runabout.
“Oh, Mr. Jacks will be thrown out,” went on Mary. “He doesn’t seem to
know how to manage that animal! And there’s a dangerous part of the road
just ahead—it goes around a curve and close to the edge of a cliff! Oh,
Tom, what are you going to do?”