TOM SWIFT CIRCLING
THE GLOBE
OR
The Daring Cruise of the Air Monarch
BY
VICTOR APPLETON
AUTHOR OF
“TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE”
“TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS”
“TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRLINE EXPRESS”
THE DON STURDY SERIES
ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
* * * * *
BOOKS FOR BOYS
By VICTOR APPLETON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORCYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTORBOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT OIL GUSHER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS CHEST OF SECRETS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRLINE EXPRESS
TOM SWIFT CIRCLING THE GLOBE
THE DON STURDY SERIES
DON STURDY ON THE DESERT OF MYSTERY
DON STURDY WITH THE BIG SNAKE HUNTERS
DON STURDY IN THE TOMBS OF GOLD
DON STURDY ACROSS THE NORTH POLE
DON STURDY IN THE LAND OF VOLCANOES
DON STURDY IN THE PORT OF LOST SHIPS
DON STURDY AMONG THE GORILLAS
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York.
* * * * *
Copyright, 1927, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.
_Tom Swift Circling the Globe_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A BLAST OF FIRE......................... 1
II. TOM ACCEPTS............................. 10
III. INTO A NOSE DIVE........................ 20
IV. JUST IN TIME............................ 30
V. THE AIR MONARCH......................... 37
VI. KICKED OUT.............................. 46
VII. STRUCK DOWN............................. 57
VIII. MIDNIGHT PROWLERS....................... 67
IX. THEY’RE OFF!............................ 80
X. ACROSS THE OCEAN........................ 91
XI. FORCED DOWN............................. 97
XII. THE HURRICANE........................... 103
XIII. A CLOSE CALL............................ 112
XIV. WHIZZING BULLETS........................ 121
XV. YELLOW GYPSIES.......................... 130
XVI. TO THE RESCUE........................... 137
XVII. KILBORN’S TRICK......................... 146
XVIII. CHINESE BANDITS......................... 154
XIX. THE TYPHOON............................. 162
XX. MALAY PIRATES........................... 172
XXI. AMONG THE HEAD-HUNTERS.................. 178
XXII. THE RAFT................................ 188
XXIII. THERE SHE BLOWS!........................ 196
XXIV. THE LAST TRICK.......................... 201
XXV. ACROSS THE CONTINENT.................... 208
[Illustration: IT WAS A NARROW ESCAPE FROM THE WHALE.]
TOM SWIFT CIRCLING
THE GLOBE
CHAPTER I
A BLAST OF FIRE
TOM SWIFT’S father folded up the newspaper he had been reading, made a
sort of club with it, and banged it down on his desk with the report of
a gun. At the same time the aged inventor exclaimed:
“I’ll wager ten thousand dollars my son Tom can do it! Yes, sir, Tom can
do it! I’ve got ten thousand dollars that says he can!”
His face flushed because of the unusual excitement under which he was
laboring, but his eyes never flinched as he looked at Thornton Burch, a
retired manufacturer of automobiles, with whom Mr. Swift had just
engaged in some spirited conversation.
“Do you want to take up that little wager, Thorn?” asked Mr. Swift,
friendly enough but very determined.
“I’m not afraid to bet, Bart,” rejoined the other, with a tantalizing
smile; “but I don’t want to rob you. That would be like taking candy
from a baby!”
“You’re right!” chimed in Medwell Trace, who was associated with Mr.
Burch in business. Both were old-time friends of Mr. Swift’s. “Better
save your money, Bart!” he added, with a chuckle.
“Don’t worry about my money, Med!” snapped out Mr. Swift, who, in spite
of his age, seemed to have plenty of pep. He went on: “Ten thousand
dollars won’t break me if I lose it, but I’m not going to. I say Tom can
do it, but my saying so doesn’t seem to make you believe it. They say
money talks, so I’m going to let mine do a little conversing for me. I
say again, I’ll wager you ten thousand dollars that Tom can do it!”
“Bless my fountain pen, but I agree with you, Bart!” exclaimed Wakefield
Damon, an eccentric friend of Tom and his father. “If anybody can turn
that trick it’s my friend Tom.”
“But be reasonable,” suggested Mr. Trace. “Granting that Tom Swift has
some speedy machines and that he has made good with them in the past, he
hasn’t a piece of apparatus now capable of speed enough and varied
activities enough, to enable him to make that trip in the time you are
claiming he can do it in, Bart. It’s impossible!”
“I say it isn’t impossible!” replied the aged Mr. Swift. “And to show
I’m in earnest I’ll wager a second ten thousand dollars with you,
Medwell Trace, that Tom can complete the journey inside of the time
mentioned.”
“Better go slow, Bart,” advised Mr. Burch, with a smile. “I may hold you
to the wager you made with me. I didn’t turn it down. Why do you go to
betting with Med before you close with me?”
“I thought I had closed with you,” stated Mr. Swift, in some surprise.
He had drawn some sheets of paper toward him on his desk and was taking
the top off his fountain pen ready to write out a memo of the wager.
“What!” cried Mr. Burch. “Are you making a double bet? With Med and with
me?”
“That’s what I’m doing!”
“For ten thousand dollars each?”
“That’s right!” and Mr. Swift seemed surprised that anybody should doubt
his word.
“Twenty thousand dollars!” murmured Mr. Damon softly. “It’s a pile of
money, Bart!”
“I know it is,” agreed Mr. Swift. “But I have more than twenty thousand
dollars worth of faith in Tom. I know he can do it!”
“That’s right! He can!” burst out the eccentric visitor. “Bless my bald
spot, but I’m almost willing to do some betting myself!”
“Leave this to me,” begged Mr. Swift. “You know Tom pretty well, for
you’ve been on enough queer trips with him—more than I have, as a
matter of fact. But I want to vindicate him and prove that I believe in
him, and I’m willing to do it to the extent of twenty thousand dollars.”
“All right! All right!” exclaimed Mr. Trace, with a snapping of his
fingers. “If you feel that way about it, Bart, put me down for ten
thousand dollars. I can use that sum very nicely.”
“If you get it—which you won’t!” chuckled Mr. Swift grimly.
“Not if Tom can help it!” echoed Mr. Damon. “Bless my——”
But he got no chance to complete one of his odd expressions, for Mr.
Swift interrupted with:
“Tom doesn’t know anything about it yet. I’ll have to call him in and
tell him and urge him to get busy and invent a new aeroplane or
something, for, frankly, I don’t believe he has just the proper piece of
apparatus yet to do the trick!”
“Whew!” whistled Mr. Burch. “And yet you’re willing to bet that Tom can
do it!”
“I know my boy,” said the aged inventor quietly.
“Now let’s get this straight,” suggested Mr. Trace, who had also taken
out pen and paper. “You say, Swift, that the hero of Jules Verne’s
story, who circled the globe in eighty days, was a piker. I agree with
you about that as far as the time consumed is concerned. With the
perfection of automobiles, oil burning steamers, and fast trains, the
journey can be accomplished in much less time than Verne ever dreamed
possible. But to say it can be done in twenty days flat is absurd!”
“Then twenty thousand dollars is absurd,” retorted Mr. Swift. “And it’s
the first time I ever heard such a sum so designated.”
“Oh, we don’t despise the money!” chuckled Mr. Trace. “We’ll take it
from you willingly enough, Bart, if you are mad enough to persist in
this wager. If you had said thirty days you might be within the bounds
of reason.”
“Considerably nearer the truth,” agreed Mr. Burch. “The trip has been
made in about twenty-eight days, elapsed time, I believe. But twenty
days, Bart——”
“I say Tom will circle the globe in twenty days _flat_—doing it
actually within twenty days!” interrupted Mr. Swift. “The only
stipulation I make is that he can use as many and as different means of
locomotion as he pleases—that is to say, aeroplanes, seaplanes, motor
boats, steamers, or trains.”
“That’s fair enough,” stated Mr. Trace. “I’ll just make a note of that.
No use passing up ten thousand dollars,” he added with a smile at his
friend. “I’ll never earn that sum any easier.”
“You mean I never shall,” said Mr. Swift.
“Then this seems to be the state of the case,” went on Mr. Burch, who
had been busily writing. “I’ll just run over this and we can all sign it
if it strikes you as being the terms of the wagers.”
The two friends, Mr. Burch and Mr. Trace, had called for a friendly
visit with Mr. Swift one day in the early summer. Some time before, Tom
and his father had turned out some machines for these two men in their
big shops, and in this way a firm friendship had been started.
Mr. Damon, who lived in the neighboring town of Waterford, had been
passing the Swift works and had stopped off for a chat. In some way the
conversation had turned on a recent globe-circling event of some United
States Naval airmen, who had made what was considered good time.
“But Tom can beat that!” Mr. Swift had said. “Tom can circle the globe
in twenty days flat!”
“What in?” asked Mr. Burch incredulously. “There isn’t a machine made
than can do it.”
“Tom’s working on a new machine now,” his father had said. “It’s a
secret, but I don’t mind mentioning it to you old friends. I haven’t
heard him say it is to be used in a globe-circling event, but from what
he has told me of it I’m sure it will make fast time, and I’m willing to
bet he can put a girdle around the earth, not quite as quickly as Puck,
but in twenty days.”
“You mean that he will use the same machine all along the route?” asked
Mr. Trace. “Why, that’s impossible!”
“Not impossible,” said Mr. Swift. “Tom’s new machine is going to be
capable of traveling in the air, on the land, or in the water. I mean on
the surface of the water, not a submarine. That would be a little too
much. But when I say I’ll wager ten thousand dollars that Tom can circle
the globe in twenty days, I don’t want to tie him down to this one
machine. Something might happen to it. If you gentlemen take my bet, it
is with the understanding that any machine or machines may be used. The
one condition is that Tom, himself, personally, shall complete the
girdle of the earth in twice ten days.”
“It can’t be done!” declared Mr. Burch.
“Never!” asserted his friend.
“If anybody can do it, bless my key ring, Tom’s the boy!” voiced Mr.
Damon.
So the wagers had come to be laid. Mr. Swift had spoken at first rather
rashly and in the heat of excitement. But he was not one to back down,
and he listened to the reading of the simple agreement which Mr. Burch
wrote out.
“Item,” droned the retired manufacturer as he scanned his paper, “a
wager is entered into this third day of June to the effect that if Tom
Swift can circle the globe inside of twenty days, actual time, in any
machine or machines of his own or any make, then I, Thornton Burch, and
I, Medwell Trace, agree that we will each and severally pay to Barton
Swift the sum of ten thousand dollars. If, on the other hand, Tom Swift
fails to circle the globe inside of twenty days flat time, then the said
Barton Swift will pay each and severally to the said Burch and Trace the
sum of ten thousand dollars.”
“Suits me!” exclaimed Mr. Trace, after a moment of thought.
“That’s my understanding of the wagers,” assented Mr. Swift.
“Then we’ll all sign this,” suggested Mr. Burch, “and Mr. Damon can put
his name down as a witness and also keep this agreement. There is no
need of putting up any money among gentlemen,” he added, and this was
assented to.
“What about a time limit?” asked Mr. Damon. “I mean the trip ought to be
undertaken and finished within a stipulated time.”
“We’ll say six months from now,” suggested Mr. Burch, and, there being
no objection, this was written in.
One after another the four signed, Mr. Damon finally as a witness.
Hardly had the last of the fountain pens ceased scratching than there
was reflected across Mr. Swift’s private office a flash of fire,
followed by a dull, booming sound that seemed to shake the whole
building.
“An explosion!” cried Mr. Damon, and from without, while the men looked
anxiously at one another, a voice cried:
“The works are on fire! They’ve been blown up! The works are on fire!”