The Boy Inventors' Diving Torpedo Boat

“What’s the trouble?”

“I don’t know. Seems to me that the car is running away.”

“It surely does. Gracious! Feel it lurch then?”

As he spoke Jack Chadwick, a good-looking, clean-cut lad of about seventeen, sprang to his feet. His example was followed by his cousin, Tom Jesson, a youth of his own age.

But the trolley car, at the same instant, gave a bound and a side jump that hurled the boys against each other.

Simultaneously the motorman turned his head and gave a frightened shout:

“She’s got away from me! We’d all better jump!”

The car was on a steep down grade. Its speed was momentarily increasing, and it leaped and swayed wildly as it dashed down the hill. The motorman had hardly spoken before he made a leap from the front platform. The two boys saw his form sprawling on the road as he landed staggeringly. He was followed by the conductor of the car, who, more fortunate, managed to keep his feet after his jump.

All this happened with the rapidity of a swiftly moving motion picture film. The two boys found themselves alone.

When they had left Boston for High Towers, the suburban estate of Professor Chadwick, Jack’s famous father, the car had for some reason been almost empty. The last passenger, with the exception of themselves, had vacated it some moments before the brakes had failed to work and the vehicle had started on its mad career down the steep hill.

In a flash the runaway car had passed the two operatives who had deserted it in terror, and was dashing forward faster than ever toward the foot of the hill.

Jack and his chum started for the front platform. Jack had a vague idea that perhaps he could control the runaway car. Before them they could see, at the foot of the hill, a sharp curve of the tracks, and beyond the flashing water of Bluewater Cove, a small but deep inlet.

All this they had but a minute to realize. Hardly had the details of the scene impressed themselves on their minds—scarcely had Jack grasped the brake handle and twisted it desperately, before the car appeared to leap into the air like a thing instinct with life. There was an alarmed shout from both boys, which was echoed by a gray-haired man, who rushed from an odd-looking building, abutting on the water, at the same instant that the car left the tracks at the curve.

The lads had just time to glimpse his overalled figure and to note his alarm, when everything was blotted out as the car dashed into a clump of trees and was utterly demolished.

It was an hour or so later when Jack and his chum came back to their senses. Their eyes opened on a scene so strange to them that they were completely at a loss to account for their surroundings. Jack lay on a sort of cot-bed, while his returning senses showed him Tom reclining on a similar contrivance almost opposite him.

The room in which they were was an unceiled, unpapered apartment. The walls were of rough pine wood, and above them the naked rafters showed. In one corner was a stove, and in another a well-furnished set of book shelves. A library table which was littered with papers supported a reading lamp as well as what appeared to be models of different bits of machinery. Taken as a whole, the room appeared to be a section of a large wooden shed, paneled or partitioned off to serve as a living place.

To Jack’s eyes, trained as they were to comprehend the details of machinery, it was perfectly plain that whoever occupied the place was engaged on some difficult, or at least abstruse, problems connected with a mechanical device; although, of course, as to what the nature of this might be, the lad could not hazard a guess.

“Where in the world are we, Tom?” he asked, as he saw by Tom’s opened eyes—one of which was badly blackened—that his cousin was in full possession of his senses.

“I don’t know. It’s a funny-looking place. Say, Jack, are you hurt?”

“No; that is, I don’t think so.”

Jack stretched his limbs carefully. Apparently the result of his self-inspection was satisfactory, for the next moment he said:

“No; I’m sound as a new dollar. How about you, Tom?”

“All right, except that my eye feels as if it was as big as the State House dome. Jiminy, what an almighty smash!”

“Yes; we were lucky to get out of it alive. But where on earth are we? That’s what I want to know.”

At this juncture a door at one end of the room opened and the same figure that had rushed from the waterside shed as the car left the curve appeared. It was that of a kindly-faced man of about sixty. His tall figure was bent and stooped, but fire and energy still twinkled in a pair of piercing black eyes. Although the possessor of these attributes wore overalls, it was evident that he was not a laboring man. His face was rather that of a dreamer, of a man accustomed to deal with mental problems. In one hand he carried a pitcher of water, while in the other he had a stout volume bound in yellow calfskin.

“Ah! So my young patients are better already,” he remarked as his glance rested on the two wide-eyed lads. “You had a miraculous escape,” he continued. “I saw you on the front platform of the car as it left the rails and headed for a clump of trees. I did not think that there was a possible chance of your surviving, but it appears that you did.”

He blinked his odd, dark eyes and smiled at Jack, who was sitting up on his couch. His coat and vest had been removed, and his head throbbed rather wildly.

“What happened, sir?” he asked. “I remember the car running away, and then I made for the brakes—that was after the conductor and the motorman jumped—but after that it’s all confused.”

“No wonder,” was the reply. “I dragged you and this other lad out of a mass of débris. Had it not been that a heavy beam protected you from being crushed, you would have undoubtedly been killed.”

“The car was smashed, then?”

“It is a complete wreck. The conductor and the motorman were but slightly injured so that you all came safely out of it by a miracle, as it were.”

“We don’t know your name, but we are deeply grateful to you for all that you have done for us,” declared Jack. “My name is Chadwick, and this is my cousin and chum, Tom Jesson.”

“Chadwick?” repeated the man, with the manner of one who recalls a familiar name. “Are you any relation of the famous Professor Chadwick, the inventor?”

“I am his son,” rejoined Jack, not without a ring of pride in his voice.

“Then you must be one of the lads who went through those extraordinary adventures in connection with the wonderful vanishing gun which you helped Mr. Pythias Peregrine perfect?”

“We are the same boys,” replied Jack smilingly, “but so far as helping Mr. Peregrine was concerned, I’m afraid we got him into more trouble than anything else.”

“Not from what I have heard,” rejoined the gray-haired man with conviction; “had it not been for you the vanishing-gun device would have been stolen, and possibly Mr. Peregrine’s life sacrificed. But now, perhaps, it is time that I made myself known to you. My name is Daniel Dancer.”

“The Daniel Dancer?” exclaimed Jack, astonishment appearing in his eyes. Tom’s round and rubicund countenance was alight with the same eager surprise as they awaited the answer.

“I believe that I have been referred to as The Daniel Dancer,” was the quiet rejoinder. “You appear to have heard of me before.”