Below them they could see men working on the damaged roof of the barn and Tom burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter as he recalled the queer sight the farmer presented dangling from the grapnel high above his broad acres.
"That reminds me," said Jack. "We must send him some money for that roof."
"How about his personal feelings?" grinned Tom.
"I guess he wiped that score out when he blazed away at the balloon bag."
"Just the same, I think we"d better go pretty high up," advised Tom. "He might fancy trying another shot at us."
"That"s so," agreed Jack, studying the men moving about far below.
He pulled a lever and the Wondership began to rise. It was as well he did so perhaps, for as they shot upward they could see that their presence had been noted. They watched the men scurrying about and pointing upward. But whether the Wondership was too high, or his animosity had cooled after his involuntary ascension, the farmer made no hostile demonstration, and they were soon out of Perkins" sight.
Apparently the new device worked fine, for all through the afternoon, at various heights and distances, they kept in perfect touch with Mr. Chadwick. Every intonation of his voice was borne plainly to their ears, Tom at times taking the wheel and the receivers while Jack relieved him at the engines.
The storm which had threatened the night before, still was hovering about, as was evidenced by the white thunderheads piled on the horizon. But the electricity in the air did not, as is sometimes the case, interfere with the powerful impulses sent out from workshop and airship. Although the air felt heavy, the instruments worked perfectly.
The boys flew over hill and dale for more than seventy miles prior to any perceptible weakening in the current. But once it began to fail it reduced rapidly until the messages were scarcely audible. But the experiments were kept up till almost dusk, when Mr. Chadwick told the boys to come back.
As they returned the radio "phones were kept working and as the distance decreased the impulses grew stronger.
"If only I had some of that Z.2.X.," said Mr. Chadwick, "I believe it would be possible to send a message across the ocean or the continent."
Not long after this Jack heard again from his father. It was a commonplace message enough. Sent merely to keep the air-line in operation.
"Here is Jupe with the afternoon mail," he said.
"Anything for us?" asked Jack, enjoying the novel sensation of talking through the air concerning such everyday matters.
"Yes, there"s one from Ned Nevins," was the rejoinder, "and here is one for me from my New York brokers. Let me see--ah-h-h-h!"
The last was a sharp exclamation, as if Mr. Chadwick had received a sudden shock. It was followed by silence. Again and again Jack flashed the red signaling lamp but there was no reply.
He was seriously worried. The sudden sharp intake of breath, almost like an outcry, that he had heard, oppressed him with a sense of apprehension. What could have happened? Turning to Tom he called for full speed ahead for the trip back.
Tom was not slow in responding. He speeded the motors up to their top capacity. In the air there were no speed laws to look out for, or other motorists or pedestrians to avoid. It was a clear road. The steel stays and stanchions of the stanch Wonder ship fairly hummed as she shot forward, while an indefinable fear clutched at Jack"s heart.
He knew that his father was subject to fainting spells and he had been overworking recently. Fast as the Wondership was cutting through the air it felt like an eternity to Jack before the gray walls and the well-laid-out grounds of High Towers came into view.
The boys lost no time in landing, and not waiting to place the Wondership in her shed, set out to look for Mr. Chadwick. Jupe came shuffling by on his way from the cornpatch.
"Where"s dad, Jupe?" asked Jack.
"In his labveroratory, ah reckons," answered the old colored man. "Leastways ah ain"t obfustucated any obserwations ob him round der contagiois atmosferics."
"Come on, Tom," said Jack. "Let"s get to dad"s workshop as quick as we can."
"Why, Jack, you--you don"t think that anything has happened to him, do you?" asked Tom.
"I don"t know. He was talking quite cheerfully to me and then, without any warning, he gave a sort of gasp and then everything was silent."
The next minute the boys entered the workshop of the inventor.
Jack"s worst fears were realized as they gazed at the scene before them. On the floor, stretched out inanimate before the radio telephone apparatus, lay Mr. Chadwick. His right hand grasped a letter.
His head lay in a pool of blood, oozing from a cut at the back of his head.
"Dad! dad! What has happened?" cried Jack, in an agony of alarm, as he fell to his knees at his father"s side.
But Mr. Chadwick did not answer. The next moment Tom"s shout for help brought everybody about the place running toward the workshop where the alarming discovery had been made.
CHAPTER XVIII.
INTO THE STORM.
"Carry him into the house and get him to bed," cried Mrs. Bagley, the housekeeper, wringing her hands distractedly. "Oh dear! poor gentleman, he"s bin a-workin" too hard, that"s what"s the matter."
Jupe and Hank Hawkins, the handy man, picked the unconscious man up and carried him to bed, where he was made comfortable.
Jack and Tom made an investigation of the workshop. At first the cut on Mr. Chadwick"s head had given Jack the impression that he might have been the victim of foul play.
But a brief survey of the place soon dispelled these conclusions. When he fell, the inventor struck his head against the sharp corner of a table right behind him, Jack concluded, and in this way inflicted the wound.
The letter that his father had been reading when he was stricken still lay on the floor. Jack picked it up. It was from the brokers in New York, the same missive Mr. Chadwick had referred to over the radio "phone just before the silence that so alarmed Jack.
Glancing over it Jack"s eyes widened. He perceived at once that the cause of his father"s sudden attack no doubt lay in the shock he had received when he opened the envelope. The letter was curt and to the point.
"Your securities wiped out in panic," it said. "Wire us and advise what to do."
That was all, but it was enough. Jack knew that most of his father"s money was invested with the firm that had written the letter, and now they had been wiped out in a money panic. Jack had no idea how much of his father"s fortune was affected, but it was evident from Mr. Chadwick"s collapse that he had been dealt a heavy blow.
He was in the midst of talking to Tom about the letter when the housekeeper came running from the house.
"Oh, here you boys are!" she exclaimed. "You must get Dr. Mays at once. Those red drops he gave your father are finished and I can"t find any more."
"I"ll telephone," said Jack promptly, stuffing the letter into his pocket.
"I"ve already tried that," said Mrs. Bagley, "but the line is out of order."
"Can"t we get some other doctor?" asked Tom.
Mrs. Bagley shook her head.
"Dr. Mays is the only one who understands your father"s case," she said. "You must get him as soon as possible."
"Is dad conscious yet?" asked Jack anxiously.
"Yes, he has been trying to tell me something but I won"t let him talk."
"We"ll get Dr. Mays right away," said Jack, but then he suddenly recollected that the electric car was slightly out of order. There would be no time to stop and repair it then.
Luckily the Wondership still stood outside the shed. Five minutes later the boys were soaring aloft, bound for the doctor"s house, which was some distance away. It was not till they had fairly started that they noticed the change in the weather.
The thunderheads they had seen earlier in the day now spread and covered the whole sky with a dark pall. The air was very still, as if nature was holding her breath. Far off, though in plain view, the sea was lying like a smooth sheet of steel-gray velvet. A sailing ship, with sails flapping, was becalmed some distance from sh.o.r.e.
"Going to rain," said Tom.
"Worse than that, I think," said Jack. "We"re in for the storm that"s been making up for two days now."
"Well, we can get there and back before it breaks."
"Easily. Let those motors out, Tom, we want to make good time."
It was oppressively hot, and had it not been for Jack"s anxiety he would have enjoyed the swift cooling pa.s.sage through the thundery air. But he was strangely troubled. Did that letter mean that his father was on the verge of ruin?
Suddenly he bethought himself of Ned Nevins" letter. He opened it, having pushed it into his pocket when they entered the workshop, where Mr. Chadwick had placed it before opening the ominous epistle from his brokers. It was a friendly, chatty note from the boy, and enclosed the checks covering the joint dividends of Jack and Tom in the Hydroaeroplane Company.
"Well, at any rate, that"s something," declared Jack to Tom, as he handed him the letter and his check.
"Yes, but if Uncle Chester is ruined, it"s only a drop in the bucket," said Tom.
"Well, it"s no use crossing your bridges till you come to them," said Jack, "and anyhow, that letter may be only a false alarm. I"ve heard they get these financial panics in Wall Street just like kids get the measles, and they get over them as quickly."
"I trust it will be so in this case," said Tom.
"So do I," said Jack hopefully, but a cold fear that his father was ruined possessed him, and made his heart feel heavy as lead.
Suddenly, from the purple firmament, came the sound of distant thunder. Following it a puff of wind, hot as the exhalation of an opened oven, blew in their faces. In the distance they saw a ragged streak of lightning tear the cloud curtains.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE "LIGHTNING CAGE."
"Look at that, will you!" exclaimed Tom.
"What, you are not scared, are you?" asked Jack.
"N-no, but I must say I"m not fond of thunderstorms Particularly when we are carrying all that gas over our heads."
"That new invention of mine will take care of that all right," said Jack confidently.
He referred to a new device of his with which the Wondership was equipped for protecting balloon bags from lightning. In a thunderstorm a balloon, or gas-filled dirigible, is subject to sudden variations of electric charge which, under certain conditions, might produce sparks leading to its annihilation.
More especially was this the case with such a craft as this Wondership, carrying as she did so much metal and steel wiring. The netting of the bag, with the idea of making it as conductive as possible, was of metal, connecting with the other metal parts of the craft so that when a steel drag rope was lowered to the ground a discharge of lightning striking the balloon would be pa.s.sed off harmlessly into the earth, as is the case with a lightning conductor.
It might be supposed that making the outside of a balloon a good conductor would invite danger from lightning. But the Boy Inventors knew that this was not the case. While the ordinary balloon envelope is a fairly good insulator against low voltage, it is unable to resist the high tension of atmospheric electricity.
Jack ascertained these facts by touching an electroscope with a bit of balloon cloth of the kind used on the Wondership, and charged with 2,000 volts of electricity. The electroscope instantly responded.
This showed that the balloon bag increased the electrical tension immediately above and below it as much as it would do if it was a perfect conductor, but the destructive action of a lightning bolt would be greater in proportion to the resistance opposed to it. So that, in reality, Jack"s device was one of the safest that could be imagined for protecting balloonists in a heavy storm.
In effect, the occupants of the Wondership were enclosed in a cage. Lightning might zip through the wires and stays, but it could not touch them. As to the danger of letting out gas through the valve in a strong electric field, which is almost certain to produce sparks, the boys did not have to worry about that for to deflate the bag they simply pumped some of its contents back into the reservoir with the powerful gas pumps.
But after all, Jack"s device had never been tested. It looked as if it was due to be. The wind came in sharp puffs, now hot and now cold.
Ragged, white clouds, like wind-driven fragments of filmy lace, began to whip across the dark heavens. The sea turned a peculiar light green and was flecked with whitecaps.
"We"re in for it," said Jack. "Better get up the storm curtains, Tom."
While Jack steered, Tom drew up the waterproof curtains and top which, in rainy weather, made the Wondership quite dry and weather-tight. Mica portholes gave light inside this extemporized cabin, and enabled the steersman to see.
This had hardly been done when a wild gust of wind struck the Wondership and sent it staggering off its course. But in a jiffy Jack regained control of the craft and headed her straight for the white house occupied by Dr. Mays, which could now be seen, its lofty cupola poking up above the trees surrounding it.
"Glad we"re nearly there," said Tom. "I don"t much like this."
"We"re O.K.," Jack a.s.sured him. "We went through a lot worse than this in that circular storm in Yucatan."
"Can"t we drop and run along the road?"
"It"s much longer by the road than by the air line, and remember we are in a big hurry."
"That"s so. But we"ve got the return trip ahead of us."
"Well, if it gets too bad, we"ll have to come back by road," said Jack, "but I haven"t got a doubt that she"ll stand anything that will come out of this storm."
Crash!
The sky was rent from end to end by jagged lightning. With a deafening roar the thunder broke, rumbling and crashing in the sultry air.
S-w-i-s-h!
The rain came in torrents, tearing at the storm curtains. It beat frantically at them with a noise like that of surf on a beach. But inside the boys were snug and dry, and the Wondership forged steadily forward. It was a weird experience for the boys. About them the artillery of heaven thundered and flashed. They could see each other"s faces and the black outlines of their craft in the livid flare of flash after flash of lightning.