MR.DAMON'S STEERING
Tom Swift was a lad of action, and his quickness in hurrying out to investigate what had happened when he was explaining about his new battery, was characteristic of him.Those of my readers who know him, through having read the previous books of this series, need not be told this, but you who, perhaps, are just making his acquaintance, may care to know a little more about him.
As told in my first book, "Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle" the young inventor lived with his father, Barton Swift, a widower, in the town of Shopton, New York.Mr.Swift was also an inventor of note.
In my initial volume of this series, Tom became possessed of a motor- cycle in a peculiar way.It was sold to him by a Mr.Wakefield Damon, a wealthy gentleman who was unfortunate in riding it.On his speedy machine, which Tom improved by several inventions, he had a number of adventures.The principal one was being attacked by a number of bad men, known as the "Happy Harry Gang," who wished to obtain possession of a valuable turbine patent model belonging to Mr.Swift.Tom was taking it to a lawyer, when he was waylaid, and chloroformed.Later he traced the gang, and, with the assistance of Mr.Damon and Eradicate Sampson, an aged colored man who made a living for himself and his mule, Boomerang, by doing odd jobs, the lad found the thieves and recovered a motor-boat which had been stolen.But the men got away.
In the second volume, called "Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat," Tom bought at auction the boat stolen by, and recovered from, the thieves, and proceeded to improve it.While he was taking his father out on a cruise for Mr Swift's health, the Happy Harry Gang made a successful attempt to steal some valuable inventions from the Swift house.Tom started to trace them, and incidentally he raced and beat Andy Foger, a rich bully.On their way down the lake, after the robbery, Tom, his father and Ned Newton, Tom's chum, saw a man hanging from the trapeze of a blazing balloon over Lake Carlopa.The balloonist was Mr.John Sharp and he was rescuedby Tom in a thrilling fashion.In his motor-boat, Tom had much pleasure, not the least of which was taking out a young lady named Miss Mary Nestor, whose acquaintance he had made after stopping her runaway horse, which his bicycle had frightened.Tom's association with Miss Nestor soon ripened into something deeper than mere friendship.
It developed that Mr Sharp, whom Tom had saved from the burning balloon, was an aeronaut of note, and had once planned to build an airship.After his recovery from his thrilling experience, he mentioned the matter to Mr.Swift and his son, with whom he took up his residence.This fitted right in with Tom's ideas, and soon father, son and the balloonist were constructing the Red Cloud, as they named their airship.It was finally completed, as related in "Tom Swift and His Airship," made a successful trial trip, and won a prize.It was planned to make a longer journey, and Tom, Mr.Sharp and Mr.Damon agreed to go together.Mr.Damon was an odd individual, who was continuously blessing some part of his anatomy, his clothing or some inanimate object but, for all that, he was a fine man.
The night before Tom and his friends started off in their airship, the Shopton Bank vault was blown open and seventy-five thousand dollars was taken.Tom and his friends did not know of this, but, no sooner had the young inventor, Mr.Sharp and Mr.Damon sailed away, than the police arrived at Mr.Swift's house to arrest them.They were charged with the robbery, and with having sailed away with the booty.
It appeared that Andy Foger said he had seen Tom hanging around the bank the night of the robbery, with a bag of burglar tools in his possession.Search was immediately begun for the airship, the occupants of which were, meanwhile, speeding on.
Tom and his two friends had trouble.They were nearly burned up in a forest fire, and were fired upon by a crowd of people with rifles, who, reading of the bank robbery and the reward offered for the capture of the thieves, hoped to bring down the airship.The fact that they were fired upon caused Tom and the two aeronauts to descend to make an investigation, and for the first time they learned of the bank theft.How they got track of the real robbers, took the sheriff with them in the airship, and raided the gang will be found set down at length in the book.Alsohow Tom administered well-deserved thrashing to Andy Foger.
Mr.Swift did not accompany his son in the airship, and when asked why he did not care to make the trip, said he was working on a new type of submarine boat, which he hoped to enter in the government trials, to win a prize.In the fourth volume of the series, called "Tom Swift and his Submarine," you may read how successful Mr.Swift was.
When the submarine, called the Advance, was finished, the party made a trip to recover three hundred thousand dollars in gold from a sunken treasure ship, off the coast of Uruguay, South America.They sailed beneath the seas for many miles, and were in great peril at times.One reason for this was that a rival firm of submarine builders got wind of the treasure, and tried to get ahead of the Swifts in recovering it.How Tom and his friends succeeded in their quest, how they nearly perished at the bottom of the sea, how they were captured by a foreign war vessel, and sentenced to death, how they fought with a school of giant sharks and how they blew up the wreck to recover the money is all told of in the book.
