Chapter 1 Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher by Victor Appleton
THE FALLING AIRPLANE
“A grand day for a spin in the air, Ned,” remarked Tom Swift, as he stretched his arms and looked through the window of his office. “What do you say? Come along and let the wind blow some of the cobwebs out of your brain.”
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” replied Ned Newton, the young financial manager of the Swift Construction Company. “I’ve got a heap of work yet to do in checking up this last monthly statement.”
“That’ll keep,” said Tom. “You’ll find the figures waiting patiently for you when you get back. I know you’re well ahead of your work, anyway, and a whirl in the circumambient will do you good. You see, I’m only thinking of you.”
“Yes, you are, you old hypocrite!” laughed Ned, who was about the same age and on the warmest terms of friendship with his talented young employer. “I’ve known for the last half hour that you weren’t paying any attention to what I’ve been saying and that your fingers were itching to get hold of the control lever of the Hummingbird. Well, I suppose you’ve got to get it out of your system, and it might as well be now as later. You go and tune up the old bus, and I’ll be with you just as soon as I’ve given some directions to my stenographer.”
Tom went off to the flying field, where several airplanes of his own construction, from the smallest to the largest sizes, were kept in readiness for use, and selected one which he had dubbed the Hummingbird because of its diminutive size. Ned had suggested the name, Aerial Mosquito, but Tom had rejected this as casting a stigma on his pet which had never “stung” them yet.
It was an attractive little craft, and Tom patted it lovingly as he went over every strut of the plane to see that it was in perfect condition. Long experience in flying had taught him to take nothing for granted. But there was nothing, even to his critical eye, that was lacking, and the same was true of the engine, which purred smoothly as it broke into its rhythmical song.
“Listen to that!” Tom cried enthusiastically to Ned, who by this time had rejoined him. “Isn’t she humming sweetly? Never misses a note. No grand opera prima donna has anything on her!”
“She sure sounds good,” agreed Ned, as he climbed into his seat and adjusted his straps.
With one last look that took in everything, Tom followed him and started the plane. The take-off was perfect. She ran along the ground for a little distance and then soared into the air like a bird. Tom let her climb, feeling out the air currents, until they were at a height of about eight hundred feet. Then he put her on a level keel and settled back in his seat to enjoy his ride to the full. At that moment he would not have exchanged places with any one on earth.
It was one of the perfect days that come in the late spring. There was scarcely a cloud in the sky. The sun was warm but not oppressive, and was tempered by a light and refreshing breeze. Below stretched a vast panorama of hill and valley and woodland, the trees and meadows luxuriant with their new coat of green. At the moment they were above Lake Carlopa, and they could see its waters gleaming like a mirror of crystal beneath the rays of the sun.
“Some scenery!” exclaimed Tom jubilantly.
“You said it,” agreed Ned. “It reminds me of that iceberg where we found the treasure——it’s so different.”
“Where we found the treasure but nearly lost our lives,” replied Tom, his face growing a little sober with the recollection. “Phew! it makes me shiver just to think of it. We’ve been in some pretty tight places, Ned, but that was the closest squeak of all.”
“I wouldn’t care to repeat it, for a fact,” said Ned. “But I’ve no doubt that you’ll be going into something just as dangerous before long. You’re a glutton for danger. I’ll bet you’re just pining for some other adventure.”
“Nothing in sight just now,” disclaimed Tom, with a laugh. “But I’m not saying that if anything beckoned I’d give it the glassy stare. There are lots of things we haven’t tried yet.”
“I’d like to know what they are,” returned Ned skeptically. “You’ve been near death as many times as I have fingers and toes.”
“And yet you’ll notice that I’m far from being a dead one yet,” said Tom lightly. “Or if I am dead, I’m a pretty lively corpse,” he added. “Don’t worry about me, old man.”
“The pitcher that goes to the well too often, you know,” warned Ned.
“Yes, I know that old wheeze,” laughed Tom. “But I’m not a pitcher and——Great Scott! what’s that fellow up to?”
The exclamation was wrenched from him by the peculiar gyrations of an airplane about two miles distant. They had noted its presence some time previously, but as they were not far from an aviation field and it was a common thing to see planes flying about, they had not given it any special attention.
Now, however, they noted that the plane was behaving much as a ship might which had lost its rudder. Its motions were confused and erratic. It would plunge downward nose first and then right itself abruptly and sail about in circles. There seemed to be no coherent plan on the part of the aviator, and indeed it acted as it might if the aviator were missing.
“Some fool aviator trying to do stunts,” was Ned’s comment, after he had watched it for a moment. “Those fellows make me tired. There are risks enough in flying without going out of the way to find them.”
“No, I don’t think it’s that,” said Tom anxiously. “It looks to me as if the pilot were in some sort of trouble. Lost control, sick, or something. I’m going over to see.”
He turned the nose of his craft directly toward the strange plane and made for it at full speed.
The queer contortions of the plane still persisted, and Ned was by this time convinced that Tom was right. A thrill of horror went through them as the conviction grew upon them that they might be about to witness a tragedy. If the plane should dash to the ground from such a height, there was not one chance in a thousand that the luckless pilot would survive.
They could see by this time that there was only one man in the plane, which was a much larger craft than their own. They could see him working desperately to get his craft under control. Where the trouble lay, whether with the plane or the engine, they had no means of telling. But that the man was in deadly danger and knew it, there was no longer any room for doubt.
They had come within half a mile of the strange airship when the disaster they had been dreading happened. The plane suddenly turned its nose to the earth until it pointed directly downward. Then it fell like a plummet, down, down, into the midst of a forest, where it landed with a terrific crash and was lost to sight.
A cry of horror burst from Tom and Ned.
“Quick, Tom!” cried the latter. “Can’t you make a landing somewhere?”
“That’s what I’m looking for,” replied Tom, as his eyes swept the surrounding country in search of some open spot.
But he looked in vain. The woods extended for several miles in every direction. Here and there were small open places, but as Tom circled about, flying as low as he could without striking the tops of the trees, he saw that none of them was large enough to permit the landing of the plane.
“There’s but one thing to do,” he said in a tense tone, when this conviction had become certainty. “We’ve got to mark the location of this place so that we can find it when we come to it again. I’ll leave you to fix that in your mind. Now we’ll make straight for home, get out my roadster and try to get to the place as soon as possible. The chances are that the poor fellow is dead, but we’ll do all we can. You get busy on the radio, so that the car will be all ready for us to jump into the minute we get back to the works.”
Ned turned his attention to the radio set with which the plane was equipped and called up Garret Jackson, the shop manager for the Swift Construction Company. He told of the accident and directed Jackson to have Tom’s roadster ready and the engine going.
Tom in the meantime had been making the Hummingbird travel at her fastest speed, and only a few minutes elapsed before they reached the yards. He made a perfect landing, and before the plane had fairly stopped he and Ned had leaped from it and were running toward the smart roadster, alongside of which Jackson was standing.
“I’ve put the first-aid kit under the seat in case you should need it,” said Jackson.
“Good work, Jackson,” commented the young inventor, as he jumped in and took the wheel. “Perhaps you’d better come along with us. There may be work for all of us. All set? Let’s go.”
He threw in the clutch and the speedy machine started and was soon racing along at a record-breaking speed in the direction of the woods. Although they were fairly flying, it seemed to Tom and Ned in their anxiety that they were crawling.
“Give her the gas, Tom,” urged Ned.
“She’s making sixty now,” replied Tom, with a glance at the speedometer. “Got the exact location, Ned?”
“Pretty nearly,” replied Ned. “Turn to the right at the first road after we pass the church at the forks. That’ll bring us to the Thaxton woods in which the plane fell. There’s an old woods road that runs through the center of the forest, and if we keep our eyes open on either side we’ll probably find it.”
Soon they had passed the church and turned into the road that Ned had indicated. At that point the going was good, but as they advanced it gradually grew more rutted and rocky. Tom kept up a high speed, however, though they had to hold on and the car bounded up and down in a manner that threatened wreck if the pace were maintained.
But a human life was in the balance, and if that could be saved nothing else mattered.
At last, deep in the woods, Tom slackened speed, for the road had “petered out.” But he could see that where it ceased to be a road it had become a trail that wound its uneven way among the trees. It was barely wide enough for the car to pass along, and here and there in the road were fragments of stumps that made traveling precarious.
“Gee, Tom, you’ll have to go slow here,” declared Ned.
“We don’t want to break our necks,” added Jackson.
“We’ll do the best we can,” answered the young inventor. “But if either of you wants to get out and walk——”
“Nothing doing, Tom!” cried his financial manager quickly. “If you stick, so do I.”
“Same here,” added the shop foreman.
On and on they rushed. Once they hit a big rock and for the moment it looked as if the machine would surely go over. Ned and Jackson held their breath. Maybe one or the other thought the next minute would be his last.
But Tom was a skilled driver, and with almost miraculous deftness he piloted the car at as fast a rate as he dared. He could not take his eyes from the road, but Ned scanned the woods on one side and Jackson on the other for any sign of the hapless airman.
They had gone perhaps half a mile when a shout came from the lips of Jackson.
“The woods are afire!” he cried, as he pointed ahead of them.
They looked in the direction indicated and saw a column of flames mounting above the tree tops.