A SECOND TEST
After his second shout of alarm Ned Newton remained quiet. After
all, he did not lack either physical or moral courage. He had not
entered into this test of the flying boat without knowing very well
that something might go wrong and that a fatal disaster for all was
possible.
How the mechanicians were affected, the inventor and Ned did not know
just then. The members of the crew in the tail of the boat made no
comment through the speaking tube. As for comments by anybody on the
earth that might be watching the careening plane, Tom Swift had made
no provision for receiving such a communication. There was radio on
board the _Winged Arrow_, but it was not in use during this test.
Nor could any advice, even from Mr. Barton Swift, have aided the
young inventor in this serious emergency. Something was wrong with
the balance of the seaplane. Just what it was, Tom had not yet the
first idea. He was as much puzzled as anybody else could have been.
The rolling of the huge structure continued. Had it not been put
together with such care, the plane would never have withstood the
second roll.
Ned, who had gained his feet and who clung to one of the hand-rails
with which the compartment in the nose of the boat was furnished, now
was silent. He watched his chum’s movements with great anxiety, but
he did not interfere by either speech or act with Tom’s attempts to
govern the craft.
The inventor watched the needles of the several indicators connected
with the mechanism of the plane. Some of these gyrated crazily when
the boat rolled. But there was an arrow on one dial that stood still.
This dial had nothing to do with the driving of the plane. At
first it did not enter Tom Swift’s mind that this dial—or what it
registered—was at all important to the flight of the seaplane.
It was the indicator which registered the amount of compressed air
that filled the “skin” of the boat. This hollow between the outer
and inner hull of the craft had to do with the balance and security
of the plane when she had to be brought down into the sea in rough
weather.
Tom’s experiments with the pigs’ bladders and the hollow bamboo had
resulted in an attempt to overcome boisterous waves through the
weight of compressed air between the two skins of the boat’s hull.
How it was going to work when the _Winged Arrow_ chanced to descend
upon a rough sea, was yet to be proved.
He noted the unwavering needle on this particular indicator several
times while the plane was rolling without getting from it any
inspiration at all. Then, suddenly, he uttered a mighty shout,
grabbed for the flexible speaking tube, and yelled to his chief
mechanician:
“Brannigan! Start the pump! Get busy!”
“What pump, boss?” was the surprised query from the tail of the boat.
“Compressed air! Isn’t but one, Brannigan! Fill the skin!”
“All right, boss! Are you goin’ down?”
“Not if I can help it. I want to stay up,” answered Tom, and dropped
the tube.
“What’s the idea?” demanded Ned, staring at him.
“I don’t quite know what the idea is myself, yet,” confessed the
young inventor. “But something has got to be done, and I am willing
to try—Here we go again!”
Once more the huge, groaning structure rolled. If it looked bad to
those on the ground, consider how the crew of the _Winged Arrow_ felt!
The usual kind of an equilibrator—that used in the government of most
dirigible balloons and other flying craft—was a part of the _Winged
Arrow’s_ equipment, but in this strange case the instrument seemed to
have no value at all. The great hull of the seaplane certainly did
not balance.
Whether Tom drove the mechanism fast or slow, the rolling continued.
No matter how strongly the structure was built, such wrenching must
of necessity in time wreck the seaplane.
They were now a mile or more high in the air. If the plane fell apart
at this altitude there would not be the smallest hope of escape for
any of her crew. Tom had tried to descend, but she seemed to roll
worse on a downward than on an upward slant.
“Brannigan! Make use of that pump!” Tom shouted through the tube.
“Aye, aye, sir!” came back the reply.
The finger on the dial had begun to move. The vacuum between the
jackets of the hull began to fill with air. The plane regained an
even keel again for a moment and Tom felt a tremor of the hull which
he knew to be from the pressure of the air driven into the vacuum.
“What are you doing, Tom?” demanded Ned, putting his lips close to
his friend’s ear.
“Trying a new one. Great Scott! Ned, if my suspicion is right,
I have worked a scheme for balancing an object floating in air
which as far as I know is an entirely new trick. I have invented
something—perhaps—without the first idea that I was doing anything
extraordinary.”
“Don’t care what it is,” replied Ned. “But if it is what is stopping
the boat from rolling——”
“I believe it is! It is a new equilibrator! I believe it is going to
work!”
“We’re sitting pretty now,” confessed Ned. “Don’t try any more tricks
till we are down again.”
“Don’t fret.” Tom turned and spoke to Brannigan through the tube
again. “Shut off! All right. Look out for yourselves back there. I am
going to zoom.”
The _Winged Arrow_, once more on even keel, began to descend in a
great spiral. Closer and closer she came to the earth. There was Lake
Carlopa and the cove from which she had taken to the air. After a
time the two friends in the bow of the plane could see the spectators
on the shore.
Tom Swift had quite recovered from his disturbance of mind. He
believed he had by chance discovered something that really was of
great value in the management of this type of seaplane. He wanted to
talk it over with his father and make other experiments before being
sure that he had guessed right.
After all, experiments in natural science are the chief paths to
invention. Tom thought that he might have hit upon one of those
lucky discoveries that often aid in the establishment of worthwhile
knowledge.
When the seaplane finally took the water, the air chamber had to be
relieved of pressure before the hull floated at a proper depth. Mr.
Barton Swift noted this at once and turned to see if the well dressed
and talkative stranger had taken note of this fact.
The man had disappeared. A motor-car shooting away along the road to
Shopton suggested the manner in which the stranger might have gone.
It was plain that for some reason the man did not wish to meet the
younger Swift at this time.
Tom’s father was so much interested in his son’s discovery regarding
the compressed air chamber and its value as an equilibrator that he
forgot to speak of the stranger and his evident interest in the new
flying boat.
Indeed, all those closely connected with Tom’s experiments and with
the success of the _Winged Arrow_, thought of little else for the
next few days but the recurrent flights of the plane.
Tom took the jump-off from the surface of the lake and from the
ground. They made successful landings on both the water and the
earth. After each flight there were adjustments to make and changes
in the mechanism. Tom and his crew worked day and night upon the
wonderful flying boat.
At length Tom Swift was ready to make a longer flight in the winged
boat. Until he had driven the _Winged Arrow_ for a considerable
distance without descending and until he had made a successful
landing in rough water and a good jump-off from the same, the young
inventor would not be satisfied that he had accomplished what he had
set out to do.
He and Ned had forgotten the stranger who they believed had shown
more than ordinary interest in the success or failure of the flying
boat. And Mr. Swift had never mentioned that person to his son.
Indeed, so deeply engaged was Tom Swift in his new seaplane that
other interests literally faded out of his mind. Before the flight to
the ocean which he had determined on, however, Tom spent an evening
with Mary Nestor and her mother.
At first Mrs. Nestor had heard so frequently from the invalid on his
northern trip that she had lost much of her anxiety regarding Mr.
Nestor’s health and safety. But after the steamship had landed him
and Mr. Damon at Reykjavik and Mr. Nestor had written one letter, his
family had not heard a word from him.
“They were going into the interior—to Rosestone—the day following
his letter,” Mary explained to Tom. “What could have become of them
after that we cannot imagine. Mother is becoming much worried again.”
“You don’t suppose that Iceland has postal communication as
frequently as we have it here in the States, do you?” asked Tom. “It
is sort of a barren land, I understand. They are all right. You’ll
get a letter any day now.”
“It has been a month,” Mrs. Nestor declared, shaking her head.
Tom laughed cheerfully. “No use talking. I see I’ll have to provision
this new plane of mine and take a trip in her to Iceland to look up
that party.”
“You could not go so far in the _Winged Arrow_, could you, Tom?”
asked Mary.
“I do not know why not. That is exactly what I built her for—long
trips. She is able to carry provisions for a party of ten and enough
gasoline to last for at least a flight of two thousand miles.”
“Two thousand miles without coming down?” cried Mary.
“About coming down, I don’t know. I expect her to clear a hundred
miles an hour when put to it. Even if we don’t drive her more than
fifty miles an hour, we could make a journey two thousand miles long
in a little over a day and a half.
“And if she proves sea-worthy—if we can bring her down and launch
her into the air again from the surface of the ocean as easily as
we do from Lake Carlopa—I would not be afraid of taking a trip to
Iceland.”
“Well, I just guess you won’t!” cried Mary. “That would be very
perilous, Tom. Even if father and Mr. Damon were in trouble up there,
you could scarcely help them by flying to them in a seaplane.”
Tom laughed too. The idea was odd enough. The use to which he
expected to put the _Winged Arrow_ was entirely practical.
That next morning they made the trial trip to the Atlantic. This test
of the flying boat would be a real test. If she had to be brought
down, either on land or sea, they would not be near headquarters and
the mechanicians aboard the plane must be equal to all repairs that
might be necessary.