The Tom Swift Megapack

by Victor Appleton

  “They’ll be ready to receive us,” he announced grimly.

  “I hope they have no dynamite bombs for us,” murmured Mr. Damon. “Bless my watch chain! I must get rid of that Nihilist literature I have about me, or they’ll take me for one,” and he tore up the tracts, and scattered them in the air.

  Meanwhile the Falcon continued to descend.

  “Maybe I can make quick repairs, and get away before they realize who we are,” said Tom, as he got ready for the landing.

  They came down in a big field, and, almost before the bicycle wheels had ceased revolving, under the application of the brakes, several men came running toward them.

  “Here they come!” cried Mr. Damon.

  “They are only farmers,” said the exile. He had donned his dark glasses again, and looked like anything but a Russian.

  “Lively, Ned!” cried Tom. “Let’s see if we can’t make repairs and get off again.”

  The two lads frantically began work, and they soon had the magneto in running order. They could have gone up as an aeroplane, leaving the repairs to the gas bag to be made later but, just as they were ready to start, there came galloping out a troop of Cossack soldiers. Their commander called something to them.

  “What is he saying?” cried Tom to Mr. Petrofsky.

  “He is telling them to surround us so that we can not get a running start, such as we need to go up. Evidently he understands aeroplanes.”

  “Well, I’m going to have a try,” declared the young inventor.

  He jumped to the pilot house, yelling to Ned to start the motor, but it was too late. They were hemmed in by a cordon of cavalry, and it would have been madness to have rushed the Falcon into them, for she would have been wrecked, even if Tom could have succeeded in sending her through the lines.

  “I guess it’s all up with us,” groaned Ned.

  And it seemed to; for, a moment later, an officer and several aides galloped forward, calling out something in Russian.

  “What is it?” asked Tom.

  “He says we are under arrest,” translated the exile.

  “What for?” demanded the young inventor.

  Ivan Petrofsky shrugged his shoulders.

  “It is of little use to ask—now,” he answered. “It may be we have violated some local law, and can pay a fine and go, or we may be taken for just what we are, or foreign spies, which we are not. It is best to keep quiet, and go with them.”

  “Go where?” cried Tom.

  “To prison, I suppose,” answered the exile. “Keep quiet, and leave it to me. I will do all I can. I don’t believe they will recognize me.

  “Bless my search warrant!” cried Mr. Damon. “In a Russian prison! That is terrible!”

  A few minutes later, expostulations having been useless, our friends were led away between guards who carried ugly looking rifles, and who looked more ugly and menacing themselves. Then the doors of the Russian prison of Owbinsk closed on Tom and his friends, while their airship was left at the mercy of their enemies.

  CHAPTER XIX

  LOST IN A SALT MINE

  The blow had descended so suddenly that it was paralyzing. Tom and his friends did not know what to do, but they saw the wisdom of the course of leaving everything to Ivan Petrofsky. He was a Russian, and he knew the Russian police ways—to his sorrow.

  “I’m not afraid,” said Tom, when they had been locked in a large prison room, evidently set apart for the use of political, rather than criminal, offenders. “We’re United States citizens, and once our counsel hears of this—as he will—there’ll be some merry doings in Oskwaski, or whatever they call this place. But I am worried about what they may do to the Falcon.”

  “Have no fears on that score,” said the Russian exile. “They know the value of a good airship, and they won’t destroy her.”

  “What will they do then?” asked Tom.

  “Keep her for their own use, perhaps.”

  “Never!” cried Tom. “I’ll destroy her first!”

  “If you get the chance!” interposed the exile.

  “But we’re American citizens!” cried Tom, “and—”

  “You forget that I am not,” interrupted Mr. Petrofsky. “I can’t claim the protection of your flag, and that is why I wish to remain unknown. We must act quietly. The more trouble we make, the more important they will know us to be. If we hope to accomplish anything we must act cautiously.”

  “But my airship!” cried Tom.

  “They won’t do anything to that right away,” declared the Russian in a whisper for he knew sometimes the police listened to the talk of prisoners. “I think, from what I overheard when they arrested us, that we either trespassed on the grounds of some one in authority, who had us taken in out of spite, or they fear we may be English or French spies, seeking to find out Russian secrets.”

  They were served with food in their prison, but to all inquiries made by Ivan Petrofsky, evasive answers were returned. He spoke in poor, broken Russian, so that he would not be taken for a native of that country. Had he been, he would have at once been in great danger of being accused as an escaped exile.

  Finally a man who, the exile whispered to his Companions, was the local governor, came to their prison. He eagerly asked questions as to their mission, and Mr. Petrofsky answered them diplomatically.

  “I don’t think he’ll make much out of what I told him,” said the exile when the governor had gone. “I let him think we were scientists, or pleasure seekers, airshipping for our amusement. He tried to tangle me up politically, but I knew enough to keep out of such traps.”

  “What’s going to become of us?” asked Ned.

  “We will be detained a few days—until they find out more about us. Their spies are busy, I have no doubt, and they are telegraphing all over Europe about us.”

  “What about my airship?” asked Tom.

  “I spoke of that,” answered the exile. “I said you were a well-known inventor of the United States, and that if any harm came to the craft the Russian Government would not only be held responsible, but that the governor himself would be liable, and I said that it cost much money. That touched him, for, in spite of their power, these Russians are miserably paid. He didn’t want to have to make good, and if it developed that he had made a mistake in arresting us, his superiors would disclaim all responsibility, and let him shoulder the blame. Oh, all is not lost yet, though I don’t like the looks of things.”

  Indeed it began to seem rather black for our friends, for, that night they were taken from the fairly comfortable, large, prison room, and confined in small stone cells down in a basement. They were separated, but as the cells adjoined on a corridor they could talk to each other. With some coarse food, and a little water, Tom and his friends were left alone.

  “Say I don’t like this!” cried our hero, after a pause.

  “Me either,” chimed in Ned.

  “Bless my burglar alarm!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “It’s an awful disgrace! If my wife ever heard of me being in jail—”

  “She may never hear of it!” interposed Tom.

  “Bless my heart!” cried the odd man. “Don’t say such things.”

  They discussed their plight at length, but nothing could be done, and they settled themselves to uneasy slumber. For two days they were thus imprisoned, and all of Mr. Petrofsky’s demands that they be given a fair trial, and allowed to know the nature of the charge against them, went for naught. No one came to see them but a villainous looking guard, who brought them their poor meals. The governor ignored them, and Mr. Petrofsky did not know what to think.

  “Well, I’m getting sick of this!” exclaimed Tom—“I wish I knew where my airship was.”

  “I fancy it’s in the same place,” replied the exile. “From the way the governor acted I think he’d be afraid to have it moved. It might be damaged. If I could only get word to some of my Revolutionary friends it might do some good, but I guess I can’t. We’ll just have to wait.”

  Anoth
er day passed, and nothing happened. But that night, when the guard came to bring their suppers, something did occur.

  “Hello! we’ve got a new one!” exclaimed Tom, as he noted the man. “Not so bad looking, either.”

  The man peered into his cell, and said something in Russian.

  “Nothing doing,” remarked the young inventor with a short laugh. “Nixy on that jabbering.”

  But, no sooner had the man’s words penetrated to the cell of Ivan Petrofsky, that the exile called out something. The guard started, hastened to that cell door, and for a few seconds there was an excited dialogue in Russian.

  “Boys! Mr. Damon! We’re saved!” suddenly cried out Mr. Petrofsky.

  “Bless my door knob! You don’t say so!” gasped the odd man. “How? Has the Czar sent orders to release us.”

  “No, but somehow my Revolutionary friends have heard about my arrest, and they have arranged for our release—secretly of course. This guard is affiliated with the Nihilist group that got on the trail of my brother. He bribed the other guard to let him take his place for tonight, and now—”

  “Yes! What is it?” cried Tom.

  “He’s going to open the cell doors and let us out!”

  “But how can we get past the other guards, upstairs?” asked Ned.

  “We’re not going that way,” explained Mr. Petrofsky. “There is a secret exit from this corridor, through a tunnel that connects with a large salt mine. Once we are in there we can make our way out. We’ll soon be free.”

  “Ask him if he’s heard anything of my airship?” asked Tom. Mr. Petrofsky put the question rapidly in Russian and then translated the answer.

  “It’s in the same place.”

  “Hurray!” cried Tom.

  Working rapidly, the Nihilist guard soon had the cell doors open, for he had the keys, and our friends stepped out into the corridor.

  “This way,” called Ivan Petrofsky, as he followed their liberator, who spoke in whispers. “He says he will lead us to the salt mine, tell us how to get out and then he must make his own escape.”

  “Then he isn’t coming with us?” asked Ned.

  “No, it would not be safe. But he will tell us how to get out. It seems that years ago some prisoners escaped this way, and the authorities closed up the tunnel. But a cave-in of the salt mine opened a way into it again.”

  They followed their queer guide, who led them down the corridor. He paused at the end, and then, diving in behind a pile of rubbish, he pulled away some boards. A black opening, barely large enough for a man to walk in upright, was disclosed.

  “In there?” cried Tom.

  “In there,” answered Mr. Petrofsky. He and the guard murmured their good-byes, and then, with a lighted candle the faithful Nihilist had provided, and with several others in reserve, our friends stepped into the blackness. They could hear the board being pulled back into place behind them.

  “Forward!” cried the exile, and forward they went.

  It was not a pleasant journey, being through an uneven tunnel in the darkness. Half a mile later they emerged into a large salt mine, that seemed to be directly beneath the town. Work in this part had been abandoned long ago, all the salt there was left being in the shape of large pillars, that supported the roof. It sparkled dully in the candle light.

  “Now let me see if I remember the turnings,” murmured Mr. Petrofsky. “He said to keep on for half an hour, and we would come out in a little woods not far from where our airship was anchored.”

  Twisting and turning, here and there in the semi-darkness, stumbling, and sometimes falling over the uneven floor, the little party went on.

  “Did you say half an hour?” asked Tom, after a while.

  “Yes,” replied the Russian.

  “We’ve been longer than that,” announced the young inventor, after a look at his watch. “It’s over an hour.”

  “Bless my timetable!” cried Mr. Damon.

  “Are you sure?” asked Mr. Petrofsky.

  “Yes,” answered Tom in a low voice.

  The Russian looked about him, flashing the candle on several turnings and tunnels. Suddenly Ned uttered a cry.

  “Why, we passed this place a little while before!” he said. “I remember this pillar that looks like two men wrestling!”

  It was true. They all remembered it when they saw it again.

  “Back in the same place!” mused the Russian. “Then we have doubled on our tracks. I’m afraid we’re lost!”

  “Lost in a Russian salt mine!” gasped Tom, and his words sounded ominous in that gloomy place.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE ESCAPE

  For a space of several seconds no one moved or spoke. In the flickering light of the candle they looked at one another, and then at the fantastic pillars of salt all about them. Then Mr. Damon started forward.

  “Bless my trolley car!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t possible! There must be some mistake. If we’ll keep on we’ll come out all right. You know your way about, don’t you, Mr. Petrofsky?”

  “I thought I did, from what the guard told us, but it seems I must have taken a wrong turning.”

  “Then it’s easily remedied,” suggested Tom “All we’ll have to do will be to go to the place where we started, and begin over again.”

  “Of course,” agreed Ned, and they all seemed more cheerful.

  “And if we start out once more, and get lost again, then what?” asked Mr. Damon.

  “Well, if worst comes to worst, we can go, back in the tunnel, go to our cells and ask the guard to come with us and show us the way went on Tom.

  “Never!” cried the exile. “It would be the most dangerous thing in the world to go back to the prison. Our escape has probably been discovered by this time, and to return would only be to put our heads in the noose. We must keep on at any cost!”

  “But if we can’t get out,” suggested Tom, “and if we haven’t anything to eat or drink, we—”

  He did not finish, but they all knew what he meant.

  “Oh, we’ll get out!” declared Ned, who was something of an optimist. “You’ve been in salt mines before, haven’t you, Mr. Petrofsky?”

  “Yes, I was condemned to one once, but it was not in this part of the country, and it was not an abandoned one. I imagine this was only an isolated mine, and that there are no others near it, so when they abandoned it, after all the salt was taken out, most people forgot about it. I remember once a party of prisoners were lost in a large salt mine, and were missed for several days.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Tom.

  “I don’t like to talk about it,” replied the Russian with a shudder.

  “Bless my soul! Was it as bad as that?” asked Mr. Damon.

  “It was,” replied the exile. “But now let’s see if we can find our way back, and start afresh. I’ll be more careful next time, and watch the turns more closely.”

  But he did not get the chance. They could not find the tunnel whence they had started. Turn after turn they took, down passage after passage sometimes in such small ones that they almost had to crawl.

  But it was of no use. They could not find their way back to the starting place, and they could not find the opening of the mine. They had used two of the slow burning candles and they had only half a dozen or so left. When these were gone—

  But they did not like to think of that, and stumbled on and on. They did not talk much, for they were too worried. Finally Ned gasped:

  “I’d give a good deal for a drink of water.”

  “So would I,” added his chum. “But what’s the use of wishing? If there was a spring down here it would be salt water. But I know what I would do—if I could.”

  “What?” asked Mr. Damon.

  “Go back to the prison. At least we wouldn’t starve there, and we’d have something to drink. If they kept us we know we could get free—sometime.”

  “Perhaps never!” exclaimed Ivan Petrofsky. “It is better to keep on here, and, as for me
, I would rather die here than go back to a Russian prison. We must—we shall get out!”

  But it was idle talk. Gradually they lost track of time as they staggered on, and they hardly knew whether a day had passed or whether it was but a few hours since they had been lost.

  Of their sufferings in that salt mine I shall not go into details. There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate their awful sufferings from thirst.

  Back and forth they wandered, up and down in the galleries of the old salt mine. They were merely hoping against hope.

  “It’s worse than the underground city of gold,” said Ned in hollow tones, as he staggered on. “Worse—much worse.” His head was feeling light. No one answered him.

  It was, as they learned later, just about two days after the time when they entered the mine that they managed to get out. Forty-eight hours, most of them of intense suffering. They were burning their last candle, and when that was out they knew they would have the horrors of darkness to fight against, as well as those of hunger and thirst.

  But fate was kind to them. How they managed to hit on the right gallery they did not know, but, as they made a turn around an immense pillar of salt Tom, who was walking weakly in advance, suddenly stopped.

  “Look! Look!” he whispered. “Another candle! Someone—someone is searching for us! We are saved!”

  “It may be the police!” said Ned.

  “That is not a candle,” spoke the Russian in hollow tones as he looked to where Tom pointed, to a little glimmer of light. “It is a star. Friends, we are saved, and by Providence! That is a star, shining through the opening of the mine. We are saved!”

  Eagerly they pressed forward, and they had not gone far before they knew that the exile was right. They felt the cool night wind on their hot cheeks.