Chapter 16 Tom Swift and His Airline Express by Victor Appleton
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?”