A GOOD DEAL ON HIS MIND
Tom came around by the slaughter house at the railroad switch, on the
far edge of Shopton, on his way home from the Nestor house. He knew
several of the men who worked there, and he wanted something that
could only be supplied in the vicinity of the town at that place.
“Pigs’ bladders? The land sake! What for, Mister Tom?” demanded Harry
M’Connel, the man the young inventor asked. “You ain’t makin’ no
contraption for to make pigs fly, are you, now? The price of pork has
gone up high enough already.”
“I’m not so sure that the bladders may not help me scheme out
something that will aid man to fly,” laughed Tom Swift.
“You shall have the bladders,” declared M’Connel. “But I never mean
to go up in one of them flying machines myself. Still and all,
there’s some folks I’d just as lief would go scootin’ skyward as
not, and I hope if they do they never come down again,” added the
slaughter-house man, grumblingly.
He went outside, selected a pair of good-sized pigs’ bladders, washed
them, and brought them back to the young inventor. Tom thanked him
and went home with the bladders. When a little boy he used to get
these bladders for balloons. He blew them up now in the same way,
tied them, and hung them out of his bedroom window to dry, warning
Rad and Koku to let them alone.
“Master make great medicine with them,” the giant declared to Rad
Sampson. “Make wonder! Whoo!”
“Yo’ make me sick—whoo!” muttered old Rad. “What kind of med’cine you
think can be made out o’ a pig’s bladder, big man? You is sho’-nuff
crazy.”
But Koku remembered what the magicians and medicine men did with such
receptacles in his own country and shook his head. He held Tom Swift
quite as able to make black magic as any medicine man who ran half
naked in the wilds.
“You see!” he declared earnestly. “Master make big noise. Do
wunnerful thing. Mighty smart.”
“Which _you_ isn’t,” declared Eradicate with scorn. “I dunno what
Mist’ Swift and Mars’ Tom wants yo’ round yere for, anyway. Yo’ ain’t
a smitch o’ good, as I can see. Yo’ ain’t even to be trusted to peel
spuds. I haf to peel de peels after you.”
“Koku great chief. He cannot do woman’s work.”
“Hey!” cried old Rad. “Since you got dat checkered suit out West
dere, whar Mars’ Tom took his electric engine, dere ain’t been any
holdin’ yo’. Makes yo’ too uppity to wear good clo’es. A breech-clout
an’ a string of beads is de best yo’ knowed about dressin’ ’fore yo’
come here.”
Koku showed his teeth at that, and stalked away. He liked to exercise
authority about the house and the shops; but Rad had been here long
before Koku, and he would not endure any usurpation in the control of
even small things.
When there was no subject of controversy between them, however, the
two were very good friends. The giant often shouldered burdens for
Rad and said nothing about it. And he never took one of his wild
jaunts through the countryside about Shopton that he did not bring
back to Rad some treasure, or present—often of a laughter-provoking
nature.
Both Rad and Koku loved to go fishing at Lake Carlopa, and two
mornings later they stole away after breakfast with tackle and bait
for the near shore of the lake. They went to a favorite strip of low
bank, hidden by hazel brush from observation except from the open
lake, and cast for white perch which were known to be plentiful at
this spot.
At first the perch were shy and Koku began to mutter charms to entice
them.
“Hey! Yo’ call dat Voodoo talk?” grumbled Rad, who was religious
himself and did not approve of “no heathen jabber.” “Yo’ stop dat,
Koku! De good Lawd’ll send some kind of a big fish—a eel, mebbe—an’
tangle you all up an’ swaller yo’ alibe. Huh! I got a bite. See dere,
big man. I’s got it! Not you, you ole——-Woof!”
For what he jerked ashore when he thought the fish was well hooked
was a rotten snag. Koku was busy himself with a nibble just then or
he might have angered his old friend by laughing. He might also have
driven all the fish away, for when Koku laughed he could be heard for
half a mile at least!
“What yo’ got, boy?” asked the disgruntled Rad Sampson. “A rubber
boot?”
But Koku had caught a fine, shining perch and he began dancing around
the tiny enclosed lawn in great delight.
“Stop dat ghost-dancing!” exclaimed Rad. “String dat fish on dat
withe. Dat’s only de fust one. Mars’ Tom hisself can eat a dozen ob
dem for his supper.”
“Sh!” hissed Koku suddenly, putting up a great hand in warning.
He had landed on one splay foot and he stood there, with the other
one raised, bent forward and listening. He had heard something beyond
the hazel hedge. As Rad often said, Koku ought to possess the most
wonderful hearing—his ears were big enough!
In a moment he crept toward the repeated sound, his movements as
soundless as those of a hunting cat. Rad came close behind him,
trying to suppress a rather asthmatic breath and stepping as though
he were walking on eggs. The sound was repeated—a little splashing.
Through an opening in the brush Rad suddenly caught sight of a moving
object. He grabbed Koku’s bare and hairy wrist.
“Hold hard, big man!” he gasped. “Dat’s a bear!”
They were almost within stone’s throw of civilization, and there had
not been a bear heard of in that part of the State for fifty years;
nevertheless, Rad was convinced of the presence of Bruin.
“A bear?” muttered the giant, not quite sure what the word meant. His
knowledge of anything but the commonest English terms was meagre.
The thing beyond the bushes moved. It was down beside the lake
itself, and Rad was sure it must be drinking.
“Yo’ look out, giant!” he whispered warningly to the giant.
But there was nothing much that Koku was really afraid of save
spirits and magic. Any animal smaller than an elephant or rhinoceros
he was not much afraid to attack. He uttered a challenging yell,
leaped almost straight up in the air, and went over the hedge of
hazel brush as though from a spring-board.
It is fortunate he did not land upon Eradicate Sampson’s “bear.” That
individual likewise uttered a yell and leaped away from the giant
with much agility.
“Whoo! Ketch him!” shouted Eradicate, charging through the bushes.
“Don’t let him git away, boy!”
But the giant remained rooted where he had landed upon the sandy
beach. Almost at his feet, floating on the surface of the quiet
water, was a polished piece of hollow bamboo to which a pair of
inflated bladders was attached—one on either side of the stick.
“Mars’ Tom!” shrieked Eradicate Sampson.
“Master no bear—what you say!” exclaimed Koku angrily. “Koku jump on
him, he be all smashed up. Rad old fool!”
“Hey!” cried Tom Swift, with some heat. “You big clown! Don’t be so
quick to jump on anything or anybody. Even a bear has some rights
that you are bound to respect. And you, Rad, why did you sic him onto
me?”
“Nebber did such a thing!” declared Rad warmly. “Nobody but a big
fool giant would try to jump right down a bear’s throat widout
lookin’ whar he was jumpin’! Huh!”
Koku likewise snorted his disgust. As usual, the two tried to lay the
fault on each other. But Tom came back with a grin on his face.
“I certainly did think a flying pterodactyl, or something of the
kind, was swooping over those bushes to get me,” he declared.
“He’s sure wuss nor dat,” declared Rad solemnly. “He’s wuss nor a
terrydicktil—sure is. He’s wuss dan a locofoco.”
Koku rolled his eyes tremendously at the sound of these big words
which he no more understood than Rad himself did. Tom hastened to
relieve the giant’s feelings to a degree.
“How many fish did you boys catch?” he asked.
“All lak’ Mist’ Damon cotched when he went to Florida after tarpon.
One!” chuckled Rad. “Mist’ Damon said he was two days cotchin’ dat
one; an’ when he seen how big it was he thought he ought t’ve spent a
week at it. This Koku actin’ like it was de on’y fish ever caught in
dis lake,” he added, with scorn.
“Well, go on, you two, with your fishing,” said Tom. “I’ve a problem
to think out and I don’t want to be bothered by either pterodactyls
or locofocos. Get along now.”
He plumped himself down on the sand again and fixed his gaze upon
the bobbing piece of bamboo and the inflated bladders. Tom had
known, without his father’s declaration to that effect, that one
of the chief problems he had to solve in the matter of building a
better flying boat than anybody else was the problem of constructing
his invention so that it could settle in a rough sea without being
capsized.
The puzzling thought was with him, day and night. It ran in his head
like a tune that sometimes seems to fill one’s mind to the expulsion
of everything else. Yet, when the young inventor was left alone again
and tried to settle himself to his problem in statics, his thought
weaved a pattern something like this:
“A shell of some light metal—aluminum, we’ll say—buoyed on the
outside by additional air chambers. Humph, it would look extremely
awkward. But, as Mr. Nestor says very often, the look of a thing
isn’t what counts. Poor Mr. Nestor! What will those two women do if
he does not live?
“How about double walls from stem to stern for air chambers? Humph!
Bless my blown-up bladders! as Mr. Damon might say,” and he chuckled.
“Mr. Damon catching a tarpon so big that he thought he should have
spent a week landing it. Humph!
“And he starts in a day or two for Iceland. Br-r-r! That’s one cold
country, I bet! Cold! Iceland! Why, if Mr. Nestor went there for a
few weeks—Great Scott!” exclaimed Tom Swift, suddenly rising and
forgetting all about his bamboo stick and pigs’ bladders floating on
the lake.
“What have I been thinking of? Wakefield Damon is just the man for
us!”
He started away from the lake at top speed, forgetting for the time
all about his plans for a flying boat that would astonish the world.