Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle Part 25

"I'll tell you soon," spoke Andy, "but first, Tom, I want to ask your forgiveness for all I've done to you, and to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for saving us. I thought we were going to be killed by those dwarfs; didn't you, Herr Landbacher?"

"Sure I did. But ve are all right now. Dis machine is efen besser as mine vot vos lost. Is dere anyt'ing to eats, on board, if you vill excuse me for being so bolt as to ask?"

"Plenty to eat," said Tom, laughing, "and while you eat you can tell us your story. And as for you, Andy, I hope we'll be friends from now on," and Tom held out his hand.

There was not much to tell that the reader has not already guessed.

Andy and the German, as has been explained, went abroad to give airship flights. They were in the lower part of Egypt, and a sudden gale drove them into Africa.

For a long time they sailed on, and then their fuel gave out, and they had to descend into the jungle. They managed to fall in with some friendly blacks, who treated them well. The airship was useless without gasolene, and it was abandoned.

Andy and the German inventor were planning to walk to some white settlement, when the tribe they were with was attacked by the red dwarfs and vanquished. Andy and his friend were taken prisoners, and carried to the very village where the missionaries were, just before the latter's rescue.

Then came the fight, and the saving of Andy and the German, almost at the last minute.

"Well, you certainly had nearly as many adventures as we did," said Tom. "But I guess they're over now."

But they were not. For several days the airship sailed on over the jungles without making a descent. Mr. and Mrs. Illingway wished to be landed at a white settlement where they had other missionary friends. Tom would go with them. This was done, and Tom and the others spent some time in this place, receiving so many kinds of thanks that they had to protest.

Andy and Herr Landbacher asked to be taken back to the coast, where they could get a steamer to America. Andy was a very different lad now, and not the bully of old.

"Well, hadn't we better be thinking of getting back home?" asked Tom one day.

"Not until we get some more ivory," declared Mr. Durban. "I think we'll have to have another elephant hunt."

They did, about a week later, and got some magnificent tusks. Tom's electric rifle did great work, to the wonder of Andy and Mr.

Landbacher, who had never before seen such a curious weapon. They also did some night hunting.

"But we haven't got that pair of extra large tusks that I want,"

said the old hunter, as he looked at the store of ivory acc.u.mulated after the last hunt. "I want those, and then I'll be satisfied.

There is one section of the country that we have not touched as yet, and I'd like to visit that."

"Then let's go," proposed Tom, so, good-bys having been said to the missionaries, who sent greetings to their friends in America, and to the church people who had arranged for their rescue, the airship was once more sent to the deepest part of a certain jungle, where Mr.

Durban hoped to get what he wanted.

They had another big hunt, but none of the elephants had any remarkable tusks, and the hunter was about to give up in despair, and call the expedition over, when one afternoon, as they were sailing along high enough to merely clear the tops of the trees, Tom heard a great crashing down below.

"There's something there," he called to Mr. Durban. "Perhaps a small herd of elephants. Shall we go down?"

Before Mr. Durban could answer there came into view, in a small clearing, an elephant of such size, and with such an enormous pair of tusks, that the young inventor and the old hunter could not repress cries of astonishment.

"There's your beast!" said Tom. "I'll go down and you can pot him,"

and, as he spoke, Tom stopped the propellers, so that the ship hung motionless in the air above where the gigantic brute was.

Suddenly, as though possessed by a fit of rage, the elephant rushed at a good-sized tree and began b.u.t.ting it with his head. Then, winding his trunk around it he pulled it up by the roots, and began trampling on it out of a paroxysm of anger.

"A rogue elephant!" exclaimed Mr. Durban. "Don't go down if you value your life, or the safety of the airship. If we attacked that brute on the ground, we would be the hunted instead of the hunters.

That's a rogue elephant of the worst kind, and he's at the height of his rage."

This was indeed so, for the beast was tearing about the clearing like mad, breaking off trees, and uprooting them in sheer wantonness. Tom knew what a "rogue" elephant was. It is a beast that goes away from the herd, and lives solitary and alone, attacking every living thing that comes in his way. It is a species of madness, a disease which attacks elephants and sometimes pa.s.ses away. More often the afflicted creature gives battle to everything and every animal he meets until he is killed or carried off by his malady. It was such an elephant that Tom now saw, and he realized what the hunter said about attacking one, as he saw the brute's mad rushes.

"Well, if it's dangerous to attack him on the ground, we'll kill him from up above," said the young inventor. "Here is the electric rifle, Mr. Durban. I'll let you have the honor of getting those tusks. My! But they're whoppers! Better use almost a full charge.

Don't take any chances on merely wounding him, and having him rush off to the jungle."

"I won't," said the old hunter, and he adjusted the electric rifle which Tom handed him.

As the great beast was tearing around, trumpeting shrilly and breaking off trees Mr. Durban fired. The creature sank down, instantly killed, and was out of his misery, for often it is great pain which makes an otherwise peaceable elephant become a "rogue."

"He's done for," said Ned. "I guess you have the tusks you want now, Mr. Durban."

"I think so," agreed the hunter, and when the airship was sent down, and the ivory cut out, it was found that the tusks were even larger than they had supposed. "It is a prize worth having," said Mr.

Durban. "I'm sure my customer will think so, too. Now I'm ready to head for the coast."

Tom Swift went to the engine room, while the last big tusks were being stored away with the other ivory. Several parts of the motor needed oiling, and Ned was a.s.sisting in this work.

"Going to start soon?" asked Mr. Durban, appearing in the doorway.

"Yes; why?" inquired Tom, who noted an anxious note in the voice of the hunter.

"Well, I don't like staying longer in this jungle than I can help.

It's not healthy in the first place, and then it's a wild and desolate place, where all sorts of wild beasts are lurking, and where wandering hands of natives may appear at any time."

"You don't mean that the red pygmies will come back; do you?" asked Ned.

"There's no telling," replied Mr. Durban with a shrug of his shoulders. "Only, as long as we've got what we're after, I'd start off as soon as possible."

"Yes, don't run any chances with those little red men," begged Andy Foger, who had given himself up for lost when he and his companion fell into their hands.

"Radder vould I be mit cannibals dan dose little imps!" spoke the German fervently.

"We'll start at once," declared Tom. "Are you all aboard, and is everything loaded into the airship?"

"Everything. I guess." answered Mr. Anderson.

Tom looked to the motor, saw that it was in working order, and shoved over the lever of the gas machine to begin the generating of the lifting vapor. To his surprise there was no corresponding hiss that told of the gas rushing into the bag.

"That's odd," he remarked. "Ned, see if anything is wrong with that machine. I'll pull the lever again."

The bank clerk stood beside the apparatus, while Tom worked the handle, but whatever was the matter with it was too intricate or complicated for Ned to solve.

"I can't see what ails it," he called to his chum. "You better have a peep."

"All right, I'll look if you work the handle."

The pa.s.sengers on the airship, which now rested in a little clearing in the dense jungle, gathered at the engine room door, looking at Tom and Ned as they worked over the machine.

"Bless my pulley wheel!" exclaimed Mr. Damon "I hope nothing has gone wrong."

"Well something has!" declared the young inventor in a m.u.f.fled voice, for he was down on his hands and knees peering under the gas apparatus. "One of the compression cylinders has cracked," he added dubiously. "It must have snapped when we landed this last time. I came down too heavily."