THE GIANT FLYING BOAT HEADED IN BETWEEN THE TALL PINNACLES OF ICE.

Tom Swift and His Flying Boat.

Page [162]

TOM SWIFT AND HIS
FLYING BOAT
OR
The Castaways of the Giant Iceberg

By
VICTOR APPLETON

Author of “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle,”
“Tom Swift in Captivity,” “Tom Swift and
His Electric Locomotive,” “The Moving
Picture Boys 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 MOTOR CYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
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

THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS SERIES

THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN THE WEST
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON THE COAST
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN THE JUNGLE
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS IN EARTHQUAKE LAND
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS AND THE FLOOD
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS AT PANAMA
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS UNDER THE SEA
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON THE WAR FRONT
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON FRENCH BATTLEFIELDS
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS’ FIRST SHOW HOUSE
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS AT SEASIDE PARK
THE MOVING PICTURE BOYS ON BROADWAY

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1923, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP

Tom Swift and His Flying Boat

CONTENTS

TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING BOAT

CHAPTER I
AN IDEA AND A FORTUNE

“I am sure we can build such a flying boat, father.”

“Humph! I wish I had your confidence, Tom,” chuckled Mr. Barton Swift, the old inventor.

His son laughed, too. “It isn’t confidence you lack,” he said. “It is just that you are too cautious to seem optimistic.”

“Have it your own way,” rejoined his father. “Just the same, a speed boat for the air, land, and sea that will do all you suggest is something to consider fearfully. Nothing to compare to it has ever yet been launched.”

“But it will be launched,” cried Tom Swift eagerly. “Somebody will put it into the air before we know it. Why not get ahead of the rest of the smart folks? Why not put out a flying boat that will make all their eyes bug out?”

“Even your slang gets ahead of me, Tom,” said his father mildly. “Just why do you wish to strain the optic nerves of your competitors?”

But Tom Swift only laughed. He knew just how young his father’s mind remained, even if he was a semi-invalid at times and his body was weakened by age and hard work.

“There is a bunch of rich men, I understand, who mean to build a flying boat to go hunting in up toward the Arctic Circle next summer. There are others that believe the mystery of the Antarctic can only be revealed through the use of such a craft. The interior of Africa, around Lake Tanganyika and the other great lakes can be properly explored only by the use of some such machine. Central South America can be reached more easily from the Amazon and its great branches than by any other means. Without a flying boat, how may one fly over the falls and escape the dangers of the rapids?”

“Good! Good!” exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift. “I see you have been thinking this thing out, at least. A great many people have excuses for what they want to do; but you, Tom, have a reason. What else?”

Tom Swift laughed again. He was a boyish fellow, in spite of all his experiences of the past few years; and a boy finds it difficult at most times to take older people into his confidence, especially about his dreams and hopes.

“I do not know that my suggestion should seem an impossibility,” Tom said, soberly. “See what the Swift Construction Company has done in the past. Of course, I am counting on your help, father, to carry such a thing to a successful conclusion.”

“You actually talk as though you had conceived a plan and would put it into effect, Tom!” cried his father.

“I don’t know but I have—and will,” said Tom, smiling once more. “At any rate, I have been revolving the scheme in my head for a long time. I admit it. A flying boat, as the storybook fellows write now, has ‘intrigued’ my interest. I’m coocoo about it, to use Ned Newton’s slang.”

“So you lay your knowledge of the argot to Ned?” laughed Mr. Swift. “But this flying boat?”

“A lot has been accomplished by other people. We would not be the first in the field, by any means. But I believe I have some ideas about such an invention that would put us ahead of everybody else. And that is the main thing.”

“The main thing, I should say, would be to have a working hypothesis of the idea in question,” observed Barton Swift dryly. “What would you build a flying boat for? To what particular use is it to be put? Therefore, in making plans for the boat, they must fit the needs of the craft as devised.

“In other words, Tom, what in the world do you want a flying boat for? You have your air scout, your aerial warship that you sold to the Government during the war, your air glider which as yet has not been equaled, your sky racer, and your old Red Cloud which scarcely any newer airship marvel has surpassed. You have been up in the air enough, it seems to me. Why not tackle the practical inventions of peace, as I pointed out in your last marvel, the electric locomotive?”

“Give me an idea,” grumbled Tom. “What shall I build—a new plough? Huh!”

“Say, Mist’ Tom! tells yo’ what,” burst into the controversy an altogether unexpected voice.

The Swifts had been talking on the side piazza of their house near the works of the Swift Construction Company at Shopton. Just inside one of the rear windows a grizzled old colored man was busy preparing vegetables for dinner.

“I tells yo’ what!” repeated Eradicate Sampson, the old serving man who had been with the Swifts for years and considered himself quite one of the family. “I tells yo’ what! Yo’ want to invent somethin’ practical like yo’ fader says, yo’ make a machine that’ll scoop the eyes out o’ ’taters widout wastin’ none o’ de meat. Dat wot yo’ do. Den yo’ sho’ nuff do somethin’ wuth while.”

Mr. Barton Swift burst into a laugh, as he almost always did when Eradicate Sampson, or “Rad” for short, made one of his suggestions. Even Tom, earnest as he was about the flying boat, grinned.

“I’ll take that up some day and fix it for you, Rad,” the young fellow said.

“Hope yo’ does it ’fore I done git all dis bag of ’taters used up. Dey is sho’ right eye-y. Sho’ is!”

“If you want to carp and criticize at ‘English as she is spoke,’ there’s your chance, father,” grumbled Tom. “Look after Rad. But this flying boat idea—a craft that will sail on the water, roll on the ground, and fly through the air——”

“Old stuff, Tom,” Mr. Swift answered bruskly. “There are very good inventions of that nature already.”

“Quite true,” admitted Tom, but not at all discouraged. “But none of them so far built would satisfy me if I were the inventor and builder.”

“Ah-ha!”

“There are faults in every one already launched. I bet there are faults in all those now under construction, no matter how much money there may be behind the invention. I am going after the perfect flying boat, or I’ll not build any.”

“Well? Tell me how you will overcome the rough-sea obstacle, for instance?” asked the very practical Mr. Swift. “That has been puzzling the flying boat folks ever since the beginning. It is unsafe to descend in a heavy sea, therefore they dare not take long voyages from land.”

“I mean to overcome that very thing if I tackle the thing at all.”

“You speak very confidently, my son,” said his father, looking at Tom seriously.

“I have thought about the invention for some time.”

Mr. Barton Swift threw up his hands in mock despair.

“Incurable!” he cried. “Once you get your teeth set in a thing, Tom, there is no shaking you loose.”

“I come honestly enough by that trait of character,” said Tom, with a grin. “They say I’m a chip off the old block.”

He sat up suddenly in his reclining chair and stared toward the front of the house. Idly at first he had heard the noise of a motor-car arriving before the house. It had stopped there. Mr. Swift had not appeared to notice it at all, but Tom suddenly overheard voices.

“Yes, sah. Dey is at home, but dey mebbe is engaged on ’portant business,” said a sonorous voice that could belong to nobody save Koku, Tom’s giant servant whom the young inventor had brought with him some years before from far parts, and who had served him well and faithfully ever since.

“I isn’t sure, sah. But I go see,” went on the important sounding Koku.

“Listen to dat giant!” grumbled old Rad Sampson. “Jes’ to hear him, yo’d think he was bossin’ dis hyer fambly. Sho’ nuff! Huh!”

The ancient colored man and the half-civilized Koku were sworn enemies up to a certain point. Both professed to scorn the other’s efficiency and abilities. And both usurped the authority of speaking for either Tom or his father on almost any occasion.

But now Koku had tried the patience of the visitor. Overtopping the giant’s serious tones came the sharper and more excited voice that Tom immediately recognized. And what the voice said startled even the placid Mr. Swift.

“Tom Swift! Tom Swift!” exclaimed the visitor. “Bless my telescope, Tom Swift, but I must see you! I must see you at once! Tom Swift!”

“Ho!” cried Tom, starting up. “Ho, Koku! Bring Mr. Damon right out here.”

Hearing the young inventor’s voice, Mr. Wakefield Damon waited for nothing more. He rushed around the corner of the house, appearing in an excited and a rather disheveled state upon the side porch where the two Swifts were sitting.

“Bless my decrepit extremities!” exclaimed the emphatic gentleman, thus referring to his own feet as they stumbled over a low ottoman and a rumpled mat. “I’m so excited I can’t even walk straight. It’s the greatest—well, how-do, Barton Swift? And you, Tom—how are you?”

Both his hosts welcomed the eccentric Wakefield Damon warmly. He was a good friend.

“What good wind has brought you here, Damon?” asked Mr. Swift, giving the visitor his hand.

“No such element as wind,” declared Mr. Damon, with his usual energy. “Air, fire and water—the three principal elements. Nothing like air. It’s frozen water has brought me here, I reckon,” and he burst into a great laugh at his own fantasy. “Ice has brought me here, not wind.”

“I heard your motor-car,” said Tom smiling. “You don’t mean to say you have invented a way of running a car with ice for fuel?”

“Nothing like that! Nothing like that!” cried Mr. Damon. “The gasoline people still rob me. But listen! I’ve got ice in my head—and some brains, I hope,” he added. “At any rate, I know where to come for help when I get stuck in anything.”

“You bring us a problem, do you?” asked Mr. Swift. “Well, Damon, what is it?”

“I have got to have Tom’s help. I want him to take a journey with me.”

“A journey—just now—when I’ve so much on my hands?” demanded the young inventor, in considerable doubt.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Mr. Damon quickly. “I’ve got to go to Iceland. There’s money in it——”

“Money in Iceland?” interrupted Tom.

“So they tell me. And a lot of it is mine,” returned the excited visitor. “I want you to go there with me, Tom, to get a fortune. A fortune, boy! It will pay us big.”

CHAPTER II
THE TREASURE CHEST

Since the Swifts had first known Mr. Wakefield Damon that eccentric character had brought to their attention a number of strange affairs, and some of them had resulted in the betterment of his own and the Swifts’ finances. So, no matter how ridiculous his first proposition might sound, Tom and his father were both ready to listen.

A trip to Iceland would scarcely absorb Tom Swift’s attention just now, but the fortune Mr. Damon promised him a share of might be a thing not to be scorned. In spite of the inventor’s several sources of income and the great sums already invested in the Swift Construction Company and in other well-paying concerns, Tom never saw the time when he could not make good use of more money.

From the time the reader was introduced to “Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle,” the title of the first book of this series, down to the twenty-fifth volume, the one preceding this present story, “Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive,” the young inventor has found good use for much money.

His inventions—some of them marvels as his father intimated—had brought them in much money, it is true. But it “takes money to breed money;” and always this is true as well as trite in the construction and marketing of inventions.

“It takes the cash to put ’em over,” Ned Newton, Tom’s dearest friend and closest co-worker, was wont to say. “But you scheme ’em out and I’ll find the cash.”

Newton, who was treasurer of the Swift Construction Company, had faithfully done his part whenever Tom got into a place where he needed money. But here was Mr. Damon with the promise of a “fortune” on which no interest would have to be paid. The young inventor was naturally interested, even though he might be up to his very ears in work.

“That sounds awfully interesting,” he said to the blusterous Wakefield Damon. “I don’t care much about the ice—unless that is merely figurative—but a fortune—well, what part of Iceland is it in?”

“I don’t know,” said the visitor bluntly. “But Iceland is not so big a country, is it? Not as big as Australia, for instance, although it is likewise an island.”

“You can’t walk over it in a day, looking for a fortune,” laughed Mr. Swift.

“Don’t expect to have to do that,” said Mr. Damon, with an answering laugh. “But, bless my calipers! we ought to be able to find Rosestone on the map.”

“Is that the name of the place where this fortune is—er—is it buried?” demanded Tom.

“Goodness only knows,” said Mr. Damon, tugging at a big wallet and finally getting it out of his inside pocket. “It may be hanging in the air. But the letter comes from Rosestone. I fancy that is a small town. And that is where the fortune is.”

“A fortune in what?” asked Mr. Swift.

“A fortune of how much?” demanded Tom.

Mr. Damon blinked his eyes very rapidly. Tom wanted to laugh, for he saw very clearly that their questions were making their friend think. Heretofore he had only been thrilled by the idea of the fortune.

“I declare, Tom Swift! I don’t know how much, and I do not know whether the fortune is in money or in stocks and bonds——”

“Or walrus tusks,” laughed Tom. “Part of Iceland, I understand, is a pretty savage country, although the people may be peaceable enough.”

“Then you know something about Iceland, Tom Swift? Bless my geographical dictionary! I can’t find much about it.”

“It is told about in full in the encyclopedia,” said Tom. “And it is a country that has always interested me. But I never expect to go to it——”

“Don’t say that, Tom Swift! Don’t say that!” begged Mr. Damon. “I have got to have your help.”

“How do you know there is enough of a fortune to pay two people for going after it?” laughed Tom.

“Here, Damon,” said Tom’s father, “you are all excited. Sit down here and have a smoke and tell us about it quietly.”

The idea of Mr. Wakefield Damon doing anything quietly amused Tom again. But he waited patiently for their friend to compose himself to a degree and tell his story. Like his father, Tom was curious.

“I’ll tell you about Aman Dele. I met him a good many years before I ever heard of you Swifts. Quite by accident, too. He was a mystery at first. It was by the strangest chance—or so I always thought—that I came across him. He was a man with a pocket full of money, and he was starving to death.”

“Stomach trouble?” asked Mr. Swift shrewdly.

“The money may have been in Russian rubles and there wasn’t enough in his pockets to buy an egg sandwich,” chuckled Tom.

“Neither of you is right,” said Wakefield Damon, rather gravely for him. “Aman Dele had perfectly good money—Danish money, I found out afterward. I found him in New York where one might think every language in the world is spoken. But he had all the interpreters puzzled.”

“And he was a Dane? Why, there is a big Danish colony in New York.”

“He was of Danish extraction; but he came from Iceland; and he came from the interior of that island where the people live about as they did when the island was first settled from Denmark, or Norway, or some Scandinavian country.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Tom suddenly. “That was away back in the time of the Norsemen. Isn’t that right, father?”

“It must be,” said Mr. Swift, in agreement.

“And you mean that this Aman Dele spoke Old Norse, Mr. Damon?” asked Tom.

“And nothing else. He was just a young fellow and very bashful. He had not entered the country through the Emigration Bureau. He had plenty of money, as I say, and undoubtedly had come across on one of the big ships. Traveling first, or possibly second cabin, his food had been supplied him at the table d’hôte. He had not been obliged to talk. And he did not know a word of French or English, or modern Danish.”

“I declare!” exclaimed Mr. Swift. “But money speaks with a louder tongue than anything else! He had money. But it was probably modern Icelandic he spoke, Tom,” he added.

“He was both bashful and afraid,” said Mr. Damon in answer to Mr. Swift, eagerly reciting his story. “He had tried to talk to people until he was ashamed. And he dared not show his money for fear somebody would get it away from him. He was, as I found out afterward, walking about New York hoping to see some sign familiar to him, or to hear a word of his mother tongue spoken on the street, and growing more and more frightened.”

“Fat chance of hearing any Icelandic!” murmured the interested Tom Swift.

“I should say so! I should say so!” agreed Mr. Damon. “And so I thought after I found out what was the matter with the fellow. I saw him lurking in the mouth of an alley right beside a sausage shop. It was over on the lower East Side, and I had just come up from the docks where I had bidden good-bye to some friends who were going to Central America. Almost all the Spigotti boats sailed from the East River docks in those days.

“Well, sir, I saw this young, pale, well-dressed fellow lounging there, and just the look of him interested me. He looked so clean and foreign in his dress, and so out of place. As I watched him, the sausage man came to the door and flung a piece of sausage to a stray dog. The dog grabbed it and ran into the alley. The next moment—bless my links of frankfurters!—this strange fellow grabbed the sausage from the dog and commenced eating it while the disappointed dog ran off howling.

“Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous? I was stricken stock-still with amazement, myself. Bless my boots! I was stuck right there, staring at the young fellow gnawing on that half spoiled sausage.”

“The poor fellow,” murmured Mr. Swift.

“That’s right. It aroused more than my curiosity. I saw that although he was well dressed and all that, he was starving. I walked right across the street and into the alley and grabbed him,” said Mr. Damon.

“He was scared and tried to break away, and even offered me the sausage,” continued the narrator. “Guess he thought I was some sort of a policeman. But I was strong in those days and I hung onto him. There was a little coffee shop in sight and I made him go with me there. Just the smell of that rank coffee almost made him faint. But I made him sip it slowly, and afterward he put away a beefsteak and bread and butter and more coffee. Then his face began to light up as though there was an electric bulb turned on inside of his skull.”

“Interesting—vastly interesting,” commented Mr. Swift. “But this fortune?”

“I’m coming to it. Give me time,” said Mr. Damon. Then, grinning, he added: “Bless my pocketbook! you can’t expect to get a fortune in a minute.”

“But we hope to hear about the treasure chest pretty soon,” put in Tom.

Mr. Damon selected a paper from several he took from his wallet. He unfolded it and spread it out so that both the Swifts could read what was written on it. It seemed to be the final paragraphs of a personal letter to Mr. Damon, and Tom read aloud:

“* * * So, my dear Mr. Damon, it was always on our friend’s mind that you should see his country. He had seen the world and he believed nothing in it was so beautiful and good as Iceland. And Rosestone is the beauty spot of that beautiful island. You know he has written you again and again to come here. ‘Ah!’ he said to me, his other friend, ‘I will bring him at last. Those Americans are all for business—for the making of money. It costs a great deal to live in America, and my friend, Damon, may need more than he has now before he dies.’

“So, Mr. Damon, he arranged it this way: His will was made and is proved in our courts. His chest of treasure is waiting for you. But you must come in person and get it. You are to visit his grave before you can have possession of the fortune Aman Dele intended you to have. It is my duty to see that his intentions are fulfilled.

“I hope to see you within the year. I would like to get this responsibility off my mind, for I am an old man and my time may be near. Start at once for Iceland, and let me know when you expect to reach Rosestone.

“Yours in the faith,

“Erick Brodak,

“Pastor Rosestone Mission.”

CHAPTER III
AMAN DELE

“Now, bless my inmost thoughts! what do you think of that?” Mr. Damon demanded, and burst into another great laugh. “Isn’t it a fact that the very strangest things happen to me? I never imagined that day when I fed that starving Icelander that he was rich and would die and leave me a fortune. We were both young men then.”

“Why,” said Mr. Swift, warmly, “this is wonderful, Damon! It surely is an instance of casting your bread on the waters and getting it back after many days.”

“With interest!” chuckled the visitor. “For all I did was to feed Aman Dele and help him find himself——”

“With your usual kindness,” broke in Tom, likewise with enthusiasm.

“Tut, tut!” exclaimed Wakefield Damon, with a gesture of dismissal. “Let me tell you more about that Dele. We sat there in the coffee house and stared at each other and neither of us knew how to make the other understand what he wanted to say. But finally I got it in my head that the first thing was to find out where the fellow came from—what part of the world, you know.”

“Quite true,” murmured Mr. Swift. “That was bright of you.”

“Bless my brain-pan! I should say so,” cried Mr. Damon, with another laugh. “I grabbed him again and led him to the nearest library. He was more scared than ever, if possible. But I got out a big book of maps and we sat down to look them over. This at last made him know I was a friend.

“Dele couldn’t read the names of the countries we looked at; but I knew by his shining eyes that he recognized the shape of some of them. He knew the British Isles. Then we turned the leaves to Sweden and Norway and he began to jabber that strange tongue of his. Then we hit little Denmark, and I was sure we were getting warm,” and once more Mr. Damon broke into laughter.

“But we had turned the pages so fast at first that we skipped Greenland and Iceland and Dele kept shaking his head at every country I showed him. But I was sure it must have a close connection with Denmark, wherever his country lay. So we went back to the beginning and all of a sudden he let out a howl.

“Bless my outlines! he acted tickled to death to see the map of Iceland. Until that time I had had an idea it was as deserted a place as Upper Greenland,” went on Mr. Damon. “Well, bless my pocket atlas! I had spotted the land he had come from I was sure. So I went to the librarian and told him the fix I was in and he actually guessed that Dele was one of those folk who talked like the old Norsemen—like Eric the Red, and Leif Ericksen, and those other Norsemen who swept the seas clean in the old days.

“So we found a couple of books with passages printed in them in Old Norse. When Dele saw them he was tickled pink. He read them as though they were the last edition of the sporting extra!” and Mr. Damon began to laugh once more.

“Bless my antiques! but it seemed to me he was as far behind the times as the rudder of Noah’s ark.”

“What did you do with him?” asked Mr. Barton Swift, much amused.

“Well, you know, I couldn’t turn him adrift. Besides, by that time we had learned to understand each other a little by signs. I borrowed the books and we took them to my rooms. In a few days I had learned half a dozen Icelandic words (I’ve forgotten ’em all now) and Aman Dele had learned how to order ham and eggs and a cup of coffee in restaurant English,” and Damon went off into another loud burst of laughter.

“So we got on pretty well. And by and by he showed me the money he carried. And then, bless my pocketbook, I was bowled over! I, thinking he was as poor as a church mouse all the time! Bless my exchange! When we got that Danish money turned into American coin of the realm, it seemed he had thousands of dollars.”

“That was an experience,” commented Tom’s father.

“Yes, indeed. He stayed with me until he learned to know the ropes and could speak fair English. He traveled all over the country and came back to visit me again. He was urgent that I should go to Iceland with him. Said there was no part of America as fine as the place he lived. He objected to the States because we didn’t have reindeer pulling our street cars instead of horses. This was before the age of the trolley, you know.

“Bless my antlers! wouldn’t that have looked fine? Cars dragged by reindeer! Well, I could not go home with him, and all through these years he has written me, off and on, to try to get me to take the journey to his little home town. Now he’s left me this fortune. But, you see, he’s fixed it so that I must finally visit his home if I am to enjoy his legacy.”

“That is awfully interesting, Mr. Damon. But why don’t you go right along and get the treasure chest alone?” Tom asked.

“Bless my brassbound luggage!” cried Mr. Damon. “Go alone to Iceland? I don’t believe I could ever find it!”

The Swifts laughed at that joke; but Tom continued to shake his head. And it was a most decided shake, at that.

“Iceland is perfectly civilized. The only danger you run is being cheated by hotel keepers and travelers’ agents.”

“But, Tom, the treasure!”

“You don’t even know how much it is,” chuckled the young inventor. “Perhaps it isn’t large enough to divide in half even! It maybe won’t pay you for going alone, let alone paying me. And I’m a sight too busy to go so far away from Shopton right now.”

“I’ll guarantee you that the treasure is a big one. How much will you want to leave what you are doing and go with me?” demanded their strange friend, with much earnestness.

“I tell you it can’t be done!” and Tom continued to wag his head negatively.

“You’ve got something so important that you cannot possibly go with me?” It was plain that Mr. Wakefield Damon was going to be vastly disappointed.

“Perhaps. Father and I were just talking over a scheme that greatly interests me, I admit. But there is another thing that stays me at this time. Mr. Nestor—perhaps you have heard it?—is very ill. I would not want to go away now. You know, Mary Nestor would feel—rightly so, I think—that I was neglecting her if I left for Iceland at this time.”

“Bless my doctor’s book!” growled the disappointed Mr. Damon. “What is the matter with all the doctors nowadays? Don’t any of them know enough to help Mary’s father? I was over to see him myself last week. Looks to me as though the medicos were just experimenting with him. I’m thankful to say I seldom have any need for medicine or doctors.”

“I fancy the physicians are puzzled about Mr. Nestor’s case,” said Mr. Barton Swift thoughtfully. “But they have sent for a specialist to come up from New York. We may learn shortly more about what is the matter with him. This New York doctor has had wonderful success. They say the cures he has to his credit are almost miraculous.”

Mr. Damon looked rather gloomy. But he expressed sympathy for Mary’s father.

“He’s a fine man. I wish him well. But I’m mighty sorry if his sickness stands in the way of your going with me, Tom,” he grumbled.

“Oh, I might find other reasons, too,” declared Tom, smiling.

“Bless my pocketbook, Tom! name your own price,” cried his eccentric friend.

“It can’t be done, I tell you. You go on to Iceland. When you get back I may have something to show you that you will agree was quite worth my while.”

Even to Mr. Damon the young inventor was not ready to talk about his plans for the flying boat that so engrossed his mind. The visitor remained to dinner; but Tom did not once mention this particular topic which he had been discussing with his father previous to Mr. Damon’s appearance.

The latter, seeing he could not have his way with his young friend in the matter of the voyage to Iceland, did not sulk. As usual he cheerfully—and noisily—discussed plans for the voyage, blessing almost everything and everybody that might be connected with the proposed journey.

“I shall start next week, go to Denmark, and from there take ship to Iceland. I’ve found out already that is the way to do. But I hate traveling alone, as you both know. And I shall want to get back again as soon as possible, for I am curious about this new thing you are studying about, Tom. Will it be a land, water, or air marvel?”

But Tom refused to be drawn into any discussion at all about his idea. “Wait!” was all he would say to his old friend.

CHAPTER IV
A HELPING HAND

Tom Swift, as has been said, did not overlook the value of money and the good uses to which it might be put. But he did not think that he wanted any share in Mr. Wakefield Damon’s venture after the mysterious treasure chest that had been left to him in the interior areas of Iceland. He was telling Mary Nestor about it that evening as he was driving her in his electric runabout through the suburbs of Shopton and out into the country.

If Tom did not go after her and actually insist upon the girl’s taking a frequent ride with him, Mary would scarcely have had “a sniff of the open air,” as her mother told her. They were both much engaged in caring for Mr. Nestor, whose disease at this time evaded the diagnoses of all the physicians who had attended him.

With Mary, as well as with his father and Ned Newton, Tom usually discussed the most secret plans regarding his inventions; so, besides telling Mary about Mr. Damon’s odd predicament, he likewise spoke of his hope of building a better flying boat than had as yet been perfected. Some of his ideas upon this subject were not new to the girl.

“I believe you will achieve a really wonderful thing, Tom,” she told him, with enthusiasm. “But it will be a monster—bigger than your great airship that you sold the Government.”

“I am not sure about those details as yet,” Tom said, shaking his head and looking sharply ahead, for the dusk was gathering fast. “The idea is just milling in my mind. Yet, I confess, I have had Ned Newton do a little figuring for me—especially regarding the getting of estimates for certain parts. Our shops cannot turn out every part of such a craft any more than we could build all of the electric locomotive we sold to the Hendrickton and Pas Alos Railroad.”

“Aren’t you afraid, Tom,” Mary asked doubtfully, “to trust outside people with your plans that way? Somebody in some other shop may steal your ideas.”

He shook his head, smiling. “No, no. I never trust my plans in full to any of the construction-works people. I may have my wings built in one shop, the cabin-boat in another, or the prow in a third. And, of course, we shall buy the motors outright. No, no. An invention is like a doctor’s prescription. When it is put together it takes a pretty good analyst to discover the ingredients. And the parts of an invention have to be assembled by the mind that dreamed out the whole contraption.”

“Dear me,” sighed Mary, “I wish some doctor had a prescription that would help father.”

“I wish so, too!” cried Tom heartily. “When does the specialist arrive?”

“Dr. Raddiker?”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes. Some kind of a foreigner. A very learned man, I believe,” Mary said, with rising confidence. “What Dr. Goslap tells mother and me about him encourages us vastly. Dr. Raddiker is a great diagnostician.”

“Wonder what sort of a doctor this fellow needs who is coming along the road?” demanded Tom suddenly. “He’ll have that car climbing the telephone poles next.”

“Goodness, Tom!” cried Mary, likewise seeing the eccentrically acting car ahead of them, and evidently heading for Shopton. “He’ll have it in the ditch next.”

“Great Scott!” shouted Tom. “That’s exactly where he has got it!”

At that moment the car ahead backed around into the hedge on one side of the highway and then shot across the road and plunged, nose-first, into the deep ditch on the other side, which was here undefended by a railing. Tom and Mary heard a wild shout for “Hellup!” and then an explosion of phrases that the young inventor was glad were uttered in some foreign tongue, for he feared that they were not polite enough for Mary’s ear.

Tom Swift speeded up his runabout and they reached the scene of the accident just as the awkward chauffeur was crawling out of the mud. The nose of the car was buried in the mire and the occupant of the tonneau of the car was struggling with the door while he ejaculated in broken English:

“Hellup! Why for did I let such a dumbskull drive de car? Ach! I should be shot for my foolishness, undt he should be hung for inefficiency. Yah! Hellup!”

Mary hopped out of Tom’s car quickly and ran to help the excited stranger open the door of the closed car. But Tom turned his attention to the chauffeur. Nothing could be done for the car itself, he saw at a glance, on its own power.

“Hi!” Tom shouted to the fellow in the ditch. “Go back and shut off your engine. She is heading for China right now. Want her to go there?”

“She can go to perdition for all of me!” grumbled the mud-covered chauffeur. “She’s got the Old Boy in her.”

“For vy you call it me names?” demanded the passenger, indignantly, just then bursting out of the motor-car. He was a bushy-headed man with owl-like spectacles and evidently the possessor of a querulous temper. “He is most insulting! Undt he is the worst driver I ever had. Dumbskull!”

“You’re the Old Boy, all right, but not the one I meant was in that engine,” growled the chauffeur sullenly. “You are a crazy nuisance——”

Tom had got out, reached the head of the car, and by leaning down the ditch side with care, he shut off the thumping engine. He now swung to look at the muttering chauffeur. The latter was ill-favored of feature and betrayed frankly that his mental condition had been brought about by indulgence in liquor.

“You work for Peltin Brothers, at Norwalk,” Tom said sharply. “I’ve seen you before. This car from their garage?”

“He comes from it, the Norwalk garage,” interposed the strange man who was now rescuing sundry bundles and bags from the interior of the car. “The car, it is mine. My other driver leaf me in one lurch, you say, no? This fellow—ah-ha! He is a low-life. It is not gasoline he buy for the car, but bad whisky for himself.”

“Well, you are in a bad mess,” Tom said to the driver. “Come on and let’s see what we can do about getting her up on the road.”

The man shook his head vigorously. He backed away, up the side of the ditch. When he reached the sound road he started right away from there, only looking back over his shoulder to bawl:

“I wouldn’t help that crazy guy, or touch that car, for a farm down east with a pig on’t. You can have it, for all o’ me!”

“Well!” exclaimed Mary, in disgust.

“A fine dog that!” grumbled Tom ruefully.

“A dumbskull!” ejaculated the strange gentleman, standing amid his baggage.

“Why! How mean!” cried Mary.

“Where were you going, sir?” Tom Swift asked.

“To a place called Shopton. Do you know it?”

“We live there,” said the young inventor briskly. “It is not far. If nobody else comes along, the young lady will drive you in my runabout. I will stay until help comes for the car. Or, maybe, we can get it out of the mud ourselves.”

“Ach! Not me!” cried the stranger. “I must not soil or injure my hands. I do not lift weights. I am not here to strain my muscles and rack my nerves for such things as this. Ach, no!”

Tom and Mary stared at each other. They did not know whether to be amused or disgusted with the stranger. He seemed willing enough to accept help, but he was not inclined to help himself!

“Well,” Tom said finally, and dryly, “you don’t mind if I try to recover your car for you?”

“Not at all,” declared the man, with a shrug. “You will do what you please. But I, I do not aid.”

“But it is your car? You bought and paid for it?”

“Yes, yes! What has that to do with it? I know my place. It is not working in the muddy ditch over a motor-car. No!”

“I believe you,” muttered Tom to Mary. “His place is somewhere on a mantelpiece for an ornament.”

“Hush, Tom,” the girl said. “Will you help him?”

“For my own satisfaction, not because I am inclined to play the Samaritan to such a fellow. I’ll lend the helping hand.”

CHAPTER V
WHAT CAME OF IT

Queerly as this man acted, Tom Swift could not have left either him or his car on the road and in the lurch. He would have felt himself to be as mean as the half intoxicated chauffeur from the Norwalk garage.

Besides, the young fellow knew without her telling him that Mary would expect him to do all he could in the emergency, and Mary’s opinion was, of course, of the first importance to Tom. While the stranger sat on the bank of the ditch with his baggage about him, not offering to lift his hand to aid, the young inventor planned and put into execution a method of rescuing the mired automobile.

He had a small ax in the tool box of the electric runabout. With this he cut a green, tough sapling about as big around as his shank. This he used to pry the nose of the stranger’s motor-car out of the mud.

He used the pry to break down the edge of the ditch, too, and finally he used a couple of nonskid chains to tackle the two cars together, and with the power of his own machine, used very skilfully, he finally dragged the other car to the highway.

Meanwhile the owner of that car sat placidly, smoking little, strong-smelling cigarettes which he rolled himself with dextrous fingers, and watched the work quite impersonally. Mary disapproved of cigarettes in any case and she whispered to Tom that she didn’t know but she was sorry that she had urged him to help the strange man!

“Ach! Brawn is not to be scorned,” said the man, when the motor-car stood upon its four wheels on the road. “It is not so good like brains—no, no. But if one has not the brains and the learning, it is well to be a mechanic, yes?”

Mary grew rosy-red at that. She considered it an insult to Tom Swift. She might have said something sharp, but her friend interposed, with a grin:

“They say that a man with brains alone on a desert island will live where a dull man, possessing only strength, would die. But I bet a stupid man with good muscles will live better in the haunts of civilization than a penniless man of brains. What would you do if you had been marooned here without money and nobody to help you?”

“Ach! You are, perhaps, a philosopher?” grumbled the man.

“You don’t have to possess much book education to be that,” laughed Tom. “Well, sir, you get in the runabout with the young lady. She can drive. I’ll try to bring your car along behind. Where are you stopping in Shopton?” he added, as the man began to gather his various bags and bundles and pack them into the runabout until there was scarcely room for the girl to reach the pedals with her feet.

“Is there not a hotel, no?”

“The Shopton House. A commercial hotel.”

“I will try it. This is one vacation. I have but one thing to do while I am avay from New York. I need the change and fresh air, or I vould never come to a place like this in answer to any call. No!”

“I wonder what and who he is,” thought Tom Swift, as Mary finally started the runabout and he, himself, climbed into the other car.

The car had been pretty well shaken up by its plunge into the ditch; and the engine balked several times before Tom managed to get it to town. Therefore Mary got far ahead of him with the car’s owner.

When Tom Swift got to the Shopton House he found his electric runabout standing at the curb. Mary had gone home, for it was now quite late in the evening. Tom ran the shaken car to the nearest garage and then went into the hotel to leave word for the stranger where his property could be found.

“You just had a guest come in, didn’t you?” Tom asked the clerk.

The latter began to grin. “You mean the foreign feller?”

“Some kind of a Dutchman, I guess,” said the young inventor. “What’s his name?”

“Look on the book and see,” was the reply. “I can’t read it, and I don’t know what to call him. He not only speaks broken English, but he writes broken English.”

“Really?” responded Tom, with a laugh. “Let’s take a squint at it.”

He wheeled the register about on its swivel and peered at the crabbed writing. He could read “NewYork,U.S.of Amerika.” But the name of the man looked as much like a hen track as it did like anything written in the English language.

“He’s one of these foreign musicians, I bet,” said the clerk to Tom. “And he wanted a room with a bath and hot running water!”

“There isn’t anything like that in this house,” answered Tom, with a laugh.

“If there was, I’d rent it myself,” declared the other. “He sniffed a lot about ‘de pad accommodations’; but he’s staying the night. Want to see him?”

“No. I’ve seen enough of him, to tell the truth,” said Tom. “But you’d better get word to him where his car is. And don’t tell him anything about me! I don’t want him hunting me up and either thanking me or trying to pay me.”

But secretly Tom did not believe the queer stranger would ever consider it necessary to thank those who had helped him out of his difficulty.

“He’s one more Dutchman with a swelled head,” was the young inventor’s private comment, as he drove his runabout home.

It was too late to go to Mary’s house again. But in the morning, the first thing when he reached his private office, he called the Nestor house. Mrs. Nestor answered the call and Tom knew, by her voice, that she was much disturbed.

“The doctors were here for a consultation again early this morning, Tom,” the woman said brokenly. “They seem to have very little hope that Mr. Nestor will ever be better. And they have given up hope of the specialist’s coming——”

“You mean the Dr. Raddiker Mary was speaking of?” asked Tom quickly.

“Yes. They expected him yesterday. They find he has left New York for a vacation and, being such a busy man, he probably will not come here to consult with our doctors on a single case. They give us no hope——”

“Oh! Don’t say that, Mrs. Nestor!” Tom interrupted.

“It is the way we both feel,” said Mary’s mother. “If I knew of any diagnostician or specialist whom we could secure, no matter what it costs, I would ask you to get him here, Tom.”

“Wait!” cried Tom suddenly. “I’m coming over. There must be some way——”

He hung up without finishing his sentence. To tell the truth he had no idea how to help Mrs. Nestor and Mary. But it seemed to him that it was almost brutal just to remain idle while the sick man slowly lost strength and vitality.

He had intended giving his entire attention that day to considering plans for the flying boat that he was determined to build. But his fears for Mr. Nestor and his sympathy for Mary and her mother would not allow of that.

He pulled down the roller-top of his desk again and started out of the shops. He had no idea what he could do to help; and yet milling about in his brain there was a hazy idea that there must be something which could be done to aid Mary’s father.

If that Dr. Raddiker had only come to consult upon the case! Mary had spoken of him so hopefully. Dr. Raddiker. Another of these crazy foreigners, perhaps—-

The thought of the unreadable writing on the Shopton House register the evening before suddenly stabbed Tom Swift’s brain like a ray of light in the darkness. He said afterward that his mind seemed to be suddenly lit up by a startling thought.

He started on a run for downtown, not even waiting to get out the car.

CHAPTER VI
THE PRONOUNCEMENT

The clerk of the Shopton House with whom Tom had talked the previous evening was standing in the doorway, grinning widely. He hailed the younger fellow before the latter could put his first question:

“Hey, there, Swift! Looking for the Great Unknown?”

“That foreigner? Yes. Is he here?” demanded Tom.

“Just gone. Couldn’t stand us any longer. We don’t know how to make coffee as they make it in some place he called Vienna. There’s no Vienna in this state.”

“He means Vienna, Austria. Did he start for that place before breakfast?”

“Well, maybe. Anyway, he got the boy to cart all his truck over to the garage. He is going to leave town at once.”

“Not much he won’t, if he’s the man I think he is!” exclaimed Tom, under his breath, and he started for the garage. “I ought to have guessed it last night.”

The motor-car Tom had rescued on the road had been repaired and was now standing by the curb. Its owner had hired another driver to take him on his way. Big spectacles and all, the stranger was planted in the back seat with his goods and chattels around him. He welcomed Tom Swift with a sort of sour smile.

“They tell me you are an inventor and a young man of property, yes—no?” began the peculiar man. “So it would be to insult you to offer you pay for what you did for me last evening. Yes?”

“You can insult me by offering money, all right,” answered Tom. “But I mean to exact payment for helping you.”

“Ach! Yes? Indeed? And how shall I pay you?”

“You are Dr. Raddiker!” exclaimed the young fellow.

“For sure. Dr. Simon Raddiker. Undt I mean to get away from this place soon. What is your bill?”

“You came up here to consult with some doctors upon a case that is puzzling them, did you not?”

“Not at all! Not at all!” cried the other. “I am on one vacation. I am in no mood to consult mit dese country doctors. Ach! For why should I work when it is a vacation I need?”

“But think of the sick man!” cried Tom almost angrily. “Suppose he needs you?”

“I do not know that. I know nothing about it yet. Why should I consider him?” and the scientist shrugged his shoulders. “What is he to me?”

“He’s a good deal to me,” declared Tom Swift sternly. “You must pay me for helping you out last night by seeing this man—Mr. Nestor.”

“Not so! Not so!” cried Dr. Raddiker, his eyes flashing behind his huge spectacles. “Ach! You are like one of these American bandits—yes? You say you will take what you want if I will not give it cheerfully, yes? Ach!”

“That is the only way you can pay your bill,” declared Tom.

“Then the bill, it goes unpaid,” Raddiker almost snarled at him. To the driver of the car he added: “Go on! I haf enough of this town. I never want to see it again.”

The querulous, nervous, excited savant was doubtless an unhappy soul, and he liked to make other people unhappy. He turned about as the car started and cried:

“Gif my regards to the young lady. She was very nice and friendly yet. She is the only nice person I meet since I come from New York.”

“Hold on!” commanded Tom. He leaped upon the running board and leaned over and stopped the car in spite of the chauffeur. His eyes flashed into those of the remarkable Dr. Raddiker.

“Hold on!” he repeated. “You speak of that girl. Do you know who she is? It is her father who is dying and whom the doctors here want you to visit. Can’t you do that much for the poor girl who was nice to you?”

“You are telling me the truth—yes?” stammered Raddiker doubtfully.

“Tell this man to drive you to Mr. Nestor’s house. His daughter will be there,” the young fellow replied.

“Vell! Vell!” agreed Raddiker. “Go on. We will try. But if you deceive me—Ach!”

He was evidently very angry. Tom did not care how angry the man was with him; he was determined he should fulfill his agreement with the local doctors and examine Mr. Nestor.

Tom rode beside the chauffeur and the moment the car stopped at the Nestor place he called Mary to the door and ran in himself and had Mrs. Nestor call up the two doctors who had been attending her husband.

Dr. Raddiker put the best face he could on a troublesome matter, now that he saw Mary and knew that the patient was one in whom she had an interest. Mary had quite charmed the grouchy savant. He stamped into the house with one of his small bags, peering about through his huge spectacles, and apparently criticising unfavorably everything that he saw.

It was certain that he criticised everything the doctors in the case had done and bluntly told them his small opinion of them when they arrived in haste to meet him. But they knew Raddiker and his unpleasant manners and accepted his diatribes in silence. One of the local physicians afterward told Tom that he considered a man with as keen a mind as the foreign doctor had the right to be as ungentlemanly as he pleased.

“Not a bit!” cried the young inventor. “The greatest man in the world could not be excused for using such language or displaying such a mean spirit.”