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

[Pg iii]

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[Pg 2] 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[Pg 3] 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,”[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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.”

[Pg 10]

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,[Pg 11] “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.”

[Pg 12]

“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,[Pg 13] 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[Pg 14] 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[Pg 15] 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.

[Pg 16]

“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.