As the two lads hurriedly slipped on some clothing they heard the voice of Mr. Swift calling:
“What is it, Tom? Has anything happened?”
“Nothing much,” was the reassuring answer. “It was a near-happening, only Ned woke up in time. Someone was in our rooms—a burglar, I guess.”
“A burglar! Good land a massy!” cried Eradicate, who had also gotten up to see what the excitement was about. “Did you cotch him, Massa Tom?”
“No, Rad; but Koku is after him.”
“Koku? Huh, he nebber cotch anybody. I’se got t’ git out dere mahse’f! Koku? Hu! I s’pects it’s dat no-’count cousin ob mine, arter mah chickens ag’in! I’ll lambaste dat coon when I gits him, so I will. I’ll cotch him for yo’-all, Massa Tom,” and, muttering to himself, the aged colored man endeavored to assume the activity of former years.
“Hark!” exclaimed Ned, as he and Tom were about ready to take part in the chase. “What’s that noise, Tom?”
“Sounds like a motor-cycle.”
“It is. That fellow—”
“It’s the same chap!” interrupted Tom. “No use trying to chase him on that speedy machine. He’s a mile away from here by now. He must have had it in waiting, ready for use. But come on, anyhow.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out to the shop. I want to see if he got in there.”
“But the charged wires?”
“He may have cut them. Come on.”
It was as Tom had suspected. The deadly, charged wires, that formed a protecting cordon about his shops, had been cut, and that by an experienced hand, probably by someone wearing rubber gloves, who must have come prepared for that very purpose. During the night the current was supplied to the wires from a storage battery, through an intensifying coil, so that the charge was only a little less deadly than when coming direct from a dynamo.
“This looks bad, Tom,” said Ned.
“It does, but wait until we get inside and look around. I’m glad I took my gun-plans to the house with me.”
But a quick survey of the shop did not reveal any damage done, nor had anything been taken, as far as Tom could tell. The office of his main shop was pretty well upset, and it looked as though the intruder had made a search for something, and, not finding it, had entered the house.
“It was the gun-plans he was after, all right,” decided Tom. “And I believe it was the same fellow who has been making trouble for me right along.”
“You mean General Waller?”
“No, that German—the one who was at the machine shop.”
“But who is he—what is his object?”
“I don’t know who he is, but he evidently wants my plans. Probably he’s a disappointed inventor, who has been trying to make a gun himself, and can’t. He wants some of my ideas, but he isn’t going to get them. Well, we may as well get back to bed, after I connect these wires again. I must think up a plan to conceal them, so they can’t be cut.”
While Tom and Ned were engaged on this, Koku came back, much out of breath, to report:
“Me not git, Master. He git on bang-bang machine and go off—puff!”
“So we heard, Koku. Never mind, we’ll get him yet.”
“Hu! Ef I had de fust chanst at him, I’d a cotched dat coon suah!” declared Eradicate, following the giant. “Koku he done git in mah way!” and he glared indignantly at the big man.
“That’s all right, Rad,” consoled Tom. “You did your best. Now we’ll all get to bed. I don’t believe he’ll come back.” Nor did he.
Tom and Ned were up at the first sign of daylight, for they wanted to go to the steel works, some miles away, in time to see the cannon taken out of the mould, and preparations made for boring the rifle channels. They found the manager, anxiously waiting for them.
“Some of my men are as interested in this as you are,” he said to the young inventor. “A number of them declare that the cast will be a failure, while some think it will be a success.”
“I think it will be all right, if my plans were followed,” said Tom. “However, we’ll see. By the way, what became of that German who made such a disturbance the day we cast the core?”
“Oh, you mean Baudermann?”
“Yes.”
“Why, it’s rather queer about him. The foreman of the shop where he was detailed, saw that he was an experienced man, in spite of his seemingly stupid ways, and he was going to promote him, only he never came back.”
“Never came back? What do you mean?”
“I mean the day after the cast of the gun was made he disappeared, and never came back.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Tom. He said nothing more, but he believed that he understood the man’s actions. Failing to obtain the desired information, or perhaps failing to spoil the cast, he realized that his chances were at an end for the present.
With great care the gun was hoisted from the mould. More eyes than Tom’s anxiously regarded it as it came up out of the casting pit.
“Bless my buttonhook!” cried Mr. Damon, who had gone with the lads. “It’s a monster; isn’t it?”
“Oh, wait until you see it with the jackets on exclaimed,” Ned, who had viewed the completed drawings. “Then you’ll open your eyes.”
The great piece of hollow steel tubing was lifted to the boring lathe. Then Tom and the manager examined it for superficial flaws.
“Not one!” cried the manager in delight.
“Not that I can see,” added Tom.. “It’s a success—so far.”
“And that was the hardest part of the work,” went on the manager of the steel plant. “I can almost guarantee you success from now on.”
And, as far as the rifling was concerned, this was true. I will not weary you with the details of how the great core of Tom Swift’s giant cannon was bored. Sufficient to say that, after some annoying delays, caused by breaks in the machinery, which had never before been used on such a gigantic piece of work, the rifling was done. After the jackets had been shrunk on, it would be rifled again, to make it true in case of any shrinkage.
Then came the almost Herculean task of shrinking on the great red-hot steel jackets and wire-windings, that would add strength to the great cannon. To do this the central core was set up on end, and the jackets, having been heated in an immense furnace, were hoisted by a great crane over the core, and lowered on it as one would lower his napkin ring over the rolled up napkin.
It took weeks of hard work to do this, and Tom and Ned, with Mr. Damon occasionally for company, remained almost constantly at the plant. But finally the cannon was completed, the rifling was done over again to correct any imperfections, and the manager said:
“Your cannon is completed, Mr. Swift. I want to congratulate you on it. Never have we done such a stupendous piece of work. Only for your plans we could not have finished it. It was too big a problem for us. Your cannon is completed, but, of course, it will have to be mounted. What about the carriage?”
“I have plans for that,” replied Tom; “but for the present I am going to put it on a temporary one. I want to test the gun now. It looks all right, but whether it will shoot accurately, and for a greater distance than any cannon has ever sent a projectile before, is yet to be seen.”
“Where will you test it?”
“That is what we must decide. I don’t want to take it too far from here. Perhaps you can select a place where it would be safe to fire it, say with a range of about thirty miles.”
“Thirty miles! why, my dear sir—”
“Oh, I’m not altogether sure that it will go that distance,” interrupted Tom, with a smile; “but I’m going to try for it, and I want to be on the safe side. Is there such a place near here?”
“Yes, I guess we can pick one out. I’ll let you know.”
“Then I must get back and arrange for my powder supply,” went on the young inventor. “We’ll soon test my giant cannon!”
“Bless my ear-drums!” cried Mr. Damon. “I hope nothing bursts. For
if that goes up, Tom Swift—”
“I’m not making it to burst,” put in Tom, with a smile. “Don’t worry. Now, Ned, back to Shopton to get ready for the test.”
CHAPTER XVI
A WARNING
“Whew, how it rains!” exclaimed Ned, as he looked out of the window.
“And it doesn’t seem to show any signs of letting up,” remarked Tom. “It’s been at it nearly a week now, and it is likely to last a week longer.”
“It’s beastly,” declared his chum. “How can you test your gun in this weather?”
“I can’t. I’ve got to wait for it to clear.”
“Bless my rubber boots! it’s just got to stop some time,” declared Mr. Damon. “Don’t worry, Tom.”
“But I don’t like this delay. I have heard that General Waller has perfected a new gun—and it’s a fine one, from all accounts. He has the proving grounds at Sandy Hook to test his on, and I’m handicapped here. He may beat me out.”
“Oh, I hope not, Tom!” exclaimed Ned. “I’m going to see what the weather reports say,” and he went to hunt up a paper.
It was several weeks after the completion of Tom’s giant cannon. In the meanwhile the gun had been moved by the steel company to a little-inhabited part of New York State, some miles from the plant. The gun had been mounted on an improvised carriage, and now Tom and his friends were waiting anxiously for a chance to try it.
The work was not complete, for the steel company employees had been hampered by the rain. Never before, it seemed, had there been so much water coming down from the clouds. Nearly every day was misty, with gradations from mere drizzles to heavy downpours. There were occasional clear stretches, however, and during them the men worked.
A few more days of clear weather would be needed before the gun could be fastened securely to the carriage, and then Tom could fire one of the great projectiles that had been cast for it. Not until then would he know whether or not his cannon was going to be a success.
Meanwhile nothing more had been heard or seen of the spy. He appeared to have given up his attempts to steal Tom’s secret, or to spoil his plans, if such was his object.
The place of the test, as I have said, was in a deserted spot. On one side of a great valley the gun was being set up. Its muzzle pointed up the valley, toward the side of a mountain, into which the gigantic projectile could plow its way without doing any damage. Tom was going to fire two kinds of cannon balls—a solid one, and one containing an explosive.
The gun was so mounted that the muzzle could be elevated or depressed, or swung from side to side. In this way the range could be varied. Tom estimated that the greatest possible range would be thirty miles. It could not be more than that, he decided, and he hoped it would not be much less. This extreme range could be attained by elevating the gun to exactly the proper pitch. Of course, any shorter range could, within certain limits, also be reached.
The gun was pointed slantingly up the valley, and there was ample room to attain the thirty-mile range without doing any damage.
At the head of the valley, some miles from where the giant cannon was mounted, was an immense dam, built recently by a water company for impounding a stream and furnishing a supply of drinking water for a distant city. At the other end of the valley was the thriving village of Preston. A railroad ran there, and it was to Preston station that Tom’s big gun had been sent, to be transported afterward, on specially made trucks, drawn by powerful autos, to the place where it was now mounted.
Tom had been obliged to buy a piece of land on which to build the temporary carriage, and also contract for a large slice of the opposite mountain, as a target against which to fire his projectiles.
The valley, as I have said, was desolate. It was thickly wooded in spots, and in the centre, near the big dam, which held back the waters of an immense artificial lake, was a great hill, evidently a relic of some glacial epoch. This hill was a sort of division between two valleys.
Tom, Ned, Mr. Damon, with Koku, and some of the employees of the steel company, had hired a deserted farmhouse not far from the place where the gun was being mounted. In this they lived, while Tom directed operations.
“The paper says ‘clear’ tomorrow,” read Ned, on his return. “‘Clear, with freshening winds.’”
“That means rain, with no wind at all,” declared Tom, with a sigh. “Well, it can’t be helped. As Mr. Damon says, it will clear some time.”
“Bless my overshoes!” exclaimed the odd gentleman. “It always has cleared; hasn’t it?”
No one could deny this.
There came a slackening in the showers, and Tom and Ned, donning raincoats, went out to see how the work was progressing. They found the men from the steel concern busy at the great piece of engineering.
“How are you coming on?” asked Tom of the foreman.
“We could finish it in two days if this rain would only let up,” replied the man.
“Well, let’s hope that it will,” observed Tom.
“If it doesn’t, there’s likely to be trouble up above,” went on the foreman, nodding in the direction of the great dam.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the water is getting too high. The dam is weakening, I heard.”
“Is that so? Why, I thought they had made it to stand any sort of a flood.”
“They evidently didn’t count on one like this. They’ve got the engineer who built it up there, and they’re doing their best to strengthen it. I also heard that they’re preparing to dynamite it to open breeches here and there in it, in case it is likely to give way suddenly.”
“You don’t mean it! Say, if it does go out with a rush it will wipe out the village.”
“Yes, but it can’t hurt us,” went on the foreman. “We’re too high up on the side of the hill. Even if the dam did burst, if the course of the water could be changed, to send it down that other valley, it would do no harm, for there are no settlements over there,” and he pointed to the distant hill.
It was near this hill that Tom intended to direct his projectiles, and on the other side of it was another valley, running at right angles to the one crossed by the dam.
As the foreman had said, if the waters (in case the dam burst) could be turned into this transverse valley, the town could be saved.
“But it would take considerable digging to open a way through that side of the mountain, into the other valley,” went on the man.
“Yes,” said Tom, and then he gave the matter no further thought, for something came up that needed his attention.
“Have you your explosive here?” asked the foreman of the young inventor the next day, when the weather showed signs of clearing.
“Yes, some of it,” said Tom. “I have another supply in a safe place in the village. I didn’t want to bring too much here until the gun was to be fired. I can easily get it if we need it. Jove! I wish it would clear. I want to get out in my Humming Bird, but I can’t if this keeps up.” Tom had brought one of his speedy little airships with him to Preston.
The following day the clouds broke a little, and on the next the sun shone. Then the work on the gun went on apace. Tom and his friends were delighted.
“Well, I think we can try a shot tomorrow!” announced Tom with delight on the evening of the first clear day, when all hands had worked at double time.
“Bless my powder-horn!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “You don’t mean it!”
“Yes, the gun is all in place,” went on the young inventor. “Of course, it’s only a temporary carriage, and not the disappearing one I shall eventually use. But it will do. I’m going to try a shot tomorrow. Everything is in readiness.”
There came a knock on the door of the room Tom had fitted up as an office in the old farmhouse.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Me—Koku,” was the answer.
“Well, what do you want, Koku?”
“Man here say him must see Master.”
Tom and Ned looked
at each other, suspicion in their eyes.
“Maybe it’s that spy again,” whispered Ned.
“If it is, we’ll be ready for him,” murmured his chum. “Show him in, Koku, and you come in too.”
But the man who entered at once disarmed suspicion. He was evidently a workman from the dam above, and his manner was strangely excited.
“You folks had better get out of here!” he exclaimed.
“Why?” asked Tom, wondering what was going to happen.
“Why? Because our dam is going to burst within a few hours. I’ve been sent to warn the folks in town in time to let them take to the hills. You’d better move your outfit. The dam can’t last twenty-four hours longer!”
CHAPTER XVII
THE BURSTING DAM
“Bless my fountain pen!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “You don’t mean it!”
“I sure do!” went on the man who had brought the startling news. “And the folks down below aren’t going to have any more time than they need to get out of the way. They’ll have to lose some of their goods, I reckon. But I thought I’d stop on my way down and warn you. You’d better be getting a hustle on.”
“It’s very kind of you,” spoke Torn; “but I don’t fancy we are in any danger.”
“No danger!” cried the man. “Say, when that water begins to sweep-down here nothing on earth can stop it. That big gun of yours, heavy as it is, will be swept away like a straw, I know—I saw the Johnstown flood!”
“But we’re so high up on the side of the hill, that the water won’t come here,” put in Ned. “We had that all figured out when we heard the dam was weak. We’re not in any danger; do you think so, Tom?”
“Well, I hardly do, or I would not have set the gun where I did. Tell me,” he went on to the man, “is there any way of opening the dam, to let the water out gradually?”
“There is, but the openings are not enough with such a flood as this. The engineers never counted on so much rain. It’s beyond any they ever had here. You see, there was a small creek that we dammed up to make our lake. Some of the water from the spillway flows into that now, but its channel won’t hold a hundredth part of the flood if the dam goes out.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 199
