Chapter XI. A Night Trip - Page 2

be glad when it's over."

"Well, I don't know," said Ned slowly. "It's part of my small contribution to Uncle Sam. I'm not like you--I can't invent things."

"But you have an awful smooth line of talk, Ned!" laughed his chum. "I believe you could sell chloride of sodium to some of the fishes in the Great Salt Lake--that is if it has fishes."

"I don't know that it has, Tom. And, anyhow, I'm not posing as a salt salesman," and Ned grinned. "But I must really go. Our bank hasn't reached its quota in the sale of Liberty Bonds yet, and it's up to me to see that it doesn't fall down."

"Go to it, Ned! And I'll get busy on my silent motor."

"Getting busy" was Tom Swift's favorite occupation, and when he was working on a new idea, as was the case now, he was seldom idle, night or day.

"I have hardly seen you for two weeks," Mary Nestor wrote him one day. "Aren't you ever coming to see me any more, or take me for a ride?"

"Yes," Tom wrote back. "I'll be over soon. And perhaps on the next ride we take I won't have to shout at you through a speaking tube because the motor makes so much noise."

From this it may be gathered that Tom was on the verge of success. While not altogether satisfied with his progress, the young inventor felt that he was on the right track. There were certain changes that needed to be made in the apparatus he was building--certain refinements that must be added, and when this should be done Tom was pretty certain that he would have what would prove to be a very quiet aeroplane, if not an absolutely silent one.

The young inventor was engaged one day with some of the last details of the experiment. The new motor, with the silencer and the changed cylinders, had been attached to one of Tom's speedy aeroplanes, and he was making some intricate calculations in relation to a new cylinder block, to be used when he started to make a completely new machine of the improved type.

Tom had set down on paper some computations regarding the cross-section of one of the cylinders, and was working out the amount of stress to which he could subject a shoulder strut, when a shadow was cast across the drawing board he had propped up in his lap.

In an instant Tom pulled a blank sheet over his mass of figures and looked up, a sudden fear coming over him that another spy was at hand. But a hearty voice reassured him.

"Bless my rice pudding!" cried Mr. Damon, "you shut yourself up here, Tom, like a hermit in the mountains. Why don't you come out and enjoy life?"

"Hello! Glad to see you!" cried Tom, joyfully. "You're just in time!"

"Time for what--dinner?" asked the eccentric man, with a chuckle. "If so, my reference to rice pudding