"Look out! Look out!" someone shouted in Tom"s ear. "There"s a beauty, a wonder!"
Tom, startled, whirled about to see the professor, gazing intently at a small rock upon which one of Tom"s heels was resting. The professor violently pushed him aside, out came his little hammer, and in a moment the new specimen was in his bag. Then, the man of science, without looking up to see whom he had spoken to, pounced on another stone.
Tom could not help laughing outright at the professor"s queer ways and deep concentration on his pet hobby.
"What a funny world this is!" remarked Tom, still amused. "Here is a man forever after rocks, rocks, and there goes a miner set upon becoming rich and discovering some imaginary mine."
He saw Jack waving to him from the veranda of the hotel.
"Listen, Tom," said his chum when they stood side by side, "I was thinking that it would be a splendid idea to send the Wondership to New York, and that from there we travel to Nestorville, via the air route."
"Great!" cried Tom, delighted. "But say, are we to take Masterson along?"
"Of course not," replied Jack. "He can go back to Boston on the train."
"Good for you!" declared Tom, slapping his chum on the back.
"But I haven"t told you my main idea yet," said Jack, smiling, "What is that?" asked the other wonderingly.
"Can"t you guess?"
"No," Tom began to say, and then the roguish twinkle in Jack"s eyes gave him a sudden inspiration. "You don"t mean to use the Z.2.X. to send messages with while we fly nearer and nearer to our old home town?"
"That is exactly what I wish to do," said Jack quietly.
"Whoop! It"s great!" cried Tom, throwing his hat in the air; and as he saw d.i.c.k coming toward them, he fairly pounced on the astonished reporter with the news.
"Flamjam flapcakes of Florida!" gasped d.i.c.k.
And so it was arranged. A few days later our party boarded a train for the East. Jack, Tom, d.i.c.k and Professor Jenks arrived at New York.
(They had left Zeb behind to attend to the work in the barren fields.) The Wondership, as on the previous occasion, was quietly but quickly a.s.sembled, and made ready to take its homeward flight. They had chosen a spot on Manhattan island still very meagerly developed, and so were not at all troubled by curious onlookers. Jack, to whom his father had explained in detail the use of Z.2.X.--or Coloradite, as they had decided to call it--busied himself almost exclusively with the radio telephone apparatus. When all was ready, he sent his father the following telegram: "Expect message, using Coloradite from New York."
The next morning they ascended. Round and round the Wondership circled, a golden speck against the blue sky. In a quarter of an hour the great metropolis seemed nothing but a giant beehive, with millions of busy workers ever hurrying in hundreds of different directions. The cars and automobiles were only like giant bees, moving somewhat swifter than those on what looked like fine threads of cotton or wool.
"What a small place New York is after all," observed the professor.
"It is larger than Boston," said Tom slyly, "Perhaps," admitted the man of science haughtily, "but not as learned or stately--no city can take its culture away from Boston."
Jack smiled, and in order to change the conversation, asked Tom, "How high now?"
"About fifteen hundred feet," guessed Tom.
"Wrong," said Jack, glancing at the barograph on the dashboard in front of him. "We have reached two thousand eight hundred feet."
"I must be asleep," said Tom, frowning. "Shall I connect the alternator?"
Jack nodded and prepared to send greetings to his father, hundreds of miles away. They were out in the country now. As the Wondership glided through the air, the professor, in viewing the villages, farms, green pastures, and stretches of woodland, regretfully shook his head as the thought occurred to him that he was missing many a precious stone. He looked over to Jack with the idea of suggesting a descent, but he saw the boy inventor patiently adjusting the tuning k.n.o.b, and waited, realizing how anxious Jack was to test the Coloradite.
The little professor, extremely interested, saw Jack place his lips to the receiver, and for the second time in his life, send out the distinct call: "Hullo, High Towers!"
Many minutes pa.s.sed without an answer. Jack"s face became grave. Was part of the machinery not properly adjusted? He went over the instrument very carefully. In so far as he could see, everything was just as it should be. Then a thought came that made him dizzy--was it possible that the Coloradite was not suited for the work, that Mr. Chadwick had been misinformed?
"What"s up?" inquired Tom, glancing up from his engines.
"By the ghost of Guzzlewits!" gasped d.i.c.k. "Don"t say it won"t work, Jack!"
The professor, ordinarily cool and very calculating, was strangely stirred. He watched the young inventor"s face. Did it mean failure?
"I don"t know," said Jack at last with forced calmness. "I will try again."
Once more Jack, oppressed by a vague fear, sent out the words: "Hullo, High Towers!"
The reply came with startling swiftness, relieving the party from the mental strain. In one voice--the professor included--they yelled, "Hurrah!"
"Congratulations!" came Mr. Chadwick"s voice in return.
"Why the delay?" asked Jack, smiling with "A small lever snapped. It required a few minutes to repair it. How far from New York are you now?"
"About forty miles."
"Good! Try to land here before sunset."
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Nestorville has a little surprise for you!" replied Mr. Chadwick, and Jack heard him chuckle.
"Good for Mr. Chadwick!" cried d.i.c.k in glee, for Jack had so arranged the instrument that all of them in the Wondership could hear Mr. Chadwick"s voice.
Then followed a long conversation between father and son. Mr. Chadwick had almost completely recovered his health, and was again working over new experiments. d.i.c.k insisted that he be permitted to tell the story of their adventures on the island of the Coloradite Treasure.
"You won"t tell it right," he declared to Jack, and insisted so strenuously that the boy inventor had to let him speak to Mr. Chadwick.
d.i.c.k set his choicest language agoing, and his vivid description of Jack"s part in every incident was embellished by the most flowery adjectives in his vocabulary. Jack had to listen, and grin.
By the time his long story was done, Nestorville was sighted. As soon as the people saw the Wondership, pandemonium broke loose. Not only Nestorville, but officials and crowds from the neighboring towns had poured in, and the reception the boys and the professor received lingered with them for many, many years.
Later, as time went on, Mr. Chadwick"s fortune was completely rehabilitated. Professor Jenks no longer was so eager to search for rocks, and while doing so get into all sorts of difficulties. He lived more at home, becoming at last, as his spinster sister declared, "a man with the proper spirit to make an ideal husband." Of course, the professor had received a very substantial sum of money from the boys.
Jack and Tom soon found themselves wealthy, and often in fancy trace the days back to that afternoon when they found the st.u.r.dy miner lying on the roadside, having been knocked unconscious by Masterson"s careless driving of his automobile.
Zeb, continued to take charge of the work on Rattlesnake Island, to which the boys never returned. For a long time the supply from the black barren appeared to be inexhaustible. Suddenly, however, it ceased, and no more was dug. But what had been mined had been more than sufficient to make all prosperous.
d.i.c.k, with his share of the proceeds, which the boys insisted that he accept, bought the Nestorville Bugle. From the very start, he made it a live, progressive paper. Sometimes, when the now busy editor had a spare hour, he invariably visited his two friends, and the three--sometimes, too, the little professor joined them unexpectedly--recounted old-time stories.
But the boys were not made lazy by wealth and fame. To this very day, Jack and Tom, with Mr. Chadwick"s aid, are devising many inventions calculated to benefit mankind. Possibly, at some future time, we shall hear something more about these, but for the present let us take our leave and say good-by.
THE END.