Tom Swift and his big dirigible

IN DIRE PERIL

Gayety and merriment were twin spirits in possession at the big hotel on top of Mt. Camon. The establishment was crowded to capacity with guests, young and old, and all were enjoying themselves to the utmost. It had been a glorious day—a day filled with the pleasure of strolls in the wooded recesses of the forest, with games of tennis and baseball on the spacious grounds, and now, in the evening, after a bountiful dinner, the men, women, and children were gathered in the big ballroom to witness another clever marionette performance.

Pietro Notine and his charming wife with her radiant smile had been asked to play a return engagement of their puppets at the Mt. Camon resort and had been only too glad to do so.

“It is with so much pleasure that I greet you again,” said the Italian puppet master to Mary Swift, as he got ready to go on with the little marionette play.

“And your so helpful husband, he is not here?” asked Mrs. Notine, with her warm smile.

“No, he’s hard at work on that big dirigible of his,” Mary answered.

“He was so good to us,” murmured the marionette master’s wife as she went behind the scenes of the miniature stage to manipulate the strings of the puppets with her husband. “Had it not been for him, our summer tour would have failed. Please make my remembrances to him.”

“I will,” promised Mary.

Then the little play went on, to the great delight of the children and the no small pleasure of the adults. There was music by the hotel orchestra and the evening came to a close with a small, informal dance following the entertainment.

Mary was standing out on the veranda of the hotel, to get a little fresh air before going to bed. She was talking to her mother.

“Is Tom coming up soon?” Mrs. Nestor asked.

“Yes,” Mary replied. “And I shall be so glad!”

From the other side of the veranda, she heard her father say:

“You haven’t seen anything more of that crazy gardener who wanted to stop you from picking roses, have you, Mr. Damon?”

“No. And, bless my insurance policy, I don’t want to, either! I guess he left these parts after he broke jail. It wouldn’t be healthy for him to stay around here after——”

Mr. Damon’s voice trailed off, and he arose, went to the edge of the big veranda, and looked down the wooded slope. There was something so odd and startling in his manner that Mary and her mother left their seats and walked toward him as Mr. Nestor asked:

“What’s the matter? What do you see?”

“A fire,” Mr. Damon replied. “Some one has started a bonfire down there in the woods, and it’s a bad thing to do with the dry weather we’ve had. The trees and bushes are like tinder. That’s a very foolish thing to do! I think I had better notify the manager. That fire is too close to this hotel. Look!”

He pointed out some flickering flames which showed plainly in the blackness of the dense forest.

“Some campers, probably,” suggested Mary. “But it’s a good way off.”

“Still, fire can travel fast!” observed Mr. Damon, and there was an anxious tone to his voice. “I don’t like it!”

As they watched, the flames spread with alarming rapidity, creeping out in two long lines as if from a central point. At the same time a cry arose from the other side of the hotel, where there was also a veranda.

“Fire! Fire! There’s a big fire down the side of the mountain!”

“Bless my——” began Mr. Damon, but he did not take time to finish. With Mr. Nestor, he ran around to the other veranda. Mary and her mother followed, having seen the first little blaze they had noticed spread out into an alarming trail of flames.

On the other side of the hotel it was the same. It seemed as if the woods on the east and west of the place had simultaneously broken out into a dangerous conflagration, and in a short time the two lines of flames crept north and south, until it seemed they would soon meet and form an encircling ring of fire about the hotel, though several miles down the mountain.

“This is terrible!” cried Mr. Damon. “Awful!”

“It is a bad forest fire,” agreed Mr. Nestor. “I never saw a fire spread so rapidly! Hark!”

Blasts from an air siren echoed in the quiet of the night. It was the danger signal from a fire warden’s station. A little wind began to blow, and it wafted to the nostrils of the hotel guests the odor of gasoline.

“Some car must have had an accident and caught fire,” said Mr. Nestor. “It has scattered the burning gas along the road that runs through the woods below and all around the hotel.”

“An automobile!” ejaculated Mary. Her thoughts went in a flash to Tom and his House on Wheels. Could he have been coming up in that?

The excitement spread rapidly throughout the hotel, and guests who had gone early to bed hurriedly dressed and came down. All were greatly alarmed and there was some talk of getting things together and departing, even though it was now midnight.

“There is no danger,” Mr. Thorndyke told his people. “Do not be alarmed. It is true that the woods are on fire, as they have been before. But the wardens and their men will soon have the fire out. Do not be alarmed.”

But for all his words there was great alarm, and some of the guests became a bit hysterical.

Mrs. Notine was standing near Mary and her people.

“It looks like a bad fire,” said the puppet master’s wife. “I am so afraid of fires—ever since that wicked dwarf tried to burn our little traveling theater. I hope he had nothing to do with this.”

“You mean that dwarf my husband hired—Chock?” asked Mary.

“Jim Chock? Yes. He seems to have a mania for fires.”

“What would he be doing up here?” Mary asked wonderingly.

“I do not know. I only hope he had no hand in this. I must go to help my husband pack the puppets. We shall leave in our van if this fire gets worse.”

“You can’t leave, I’m afraid,” Mr. Damon said. “At least not now.”

“Why not?”

“Because the fire is completely about the hotel, as you can see. It is some distance away and probably will not come here. But until the circle of flames is broken you cannot get through.”

“Oh, but we must get away!” cried Mrs. Notine. “I shall go tell my husband!”

As she hurried off, there was some excitement around one of the lower entrances to the hotel—at a basement door directly under Mary Swift and her people, who stood on the veranda watching the ever increasing flames below them.

Mary saw a man stagger through the light which streamed out of the basement toward a group of hotel employees. He was a man who had evidently just come off a tank automobile containing oil or gasoline, for his clothes bore unmistakable evidences of that occupation. There was some excited talk, and, evidently, Mr. Thorndyke had been sent for, for a moment later Mary, leaning over the edge of the veranda, saw the manager talking to the oil man.

“What is it?” asked the manager.

“Danger! That’s what it is!” cried the man. “A little while ago, as I was driving up here with a tank of oil and gas for your place, I was stopped by a man with a red light who leaped out into the road from the bushes and waved it at me. I thought there was some obstruction ahead, and I got down to ask him about it. Then he jumped at me and knocked me out.”

“Knocked you out?”

“Yes, unconscious. Slammed a rock on my head. When I came to I saw him driving away with my tank auto and the cocks were open. Oil and gas was running out all over the road.”

“Gasoline!” cried the hotel manager.

“Yes, and oil,” went on the driver, whose head was bleeding. “I yelled to the fellow, but he kept on driving with the cocks open, and a little later I saw a spurt of flame and I knew the oil and gas had caught fire—or had been set.”

“This is awful!” gasped Mr. Thorndyke, and murmured cries of alarm came from the hotel workers. “We are surrounded by fire!”

It was only too true. The flames were rapidly spreading, started by the oil and gasoline and now fed by the tinder of trees, dried leaves, and bushes of the forest.

“It was the work of some madman!” cried Mr. Damon, when he and the other guests heard what had happened. “The state police should be informed!”

“An alarm has been given,” said Mr. Thorndyke, going about and trying to calm his guests. “The fire wardens are summoning help from all over.”

This was evidenced by the weird screaming of the air sirens located here and there on the mountain. But the fire was spreading fast and the forest for miles around the big hotel was in flames. Something very like panic spread among the guests in spite of the efforts of the manager and some of the cooler guests to keep it in check.

“What can we do?” Mr. Nestor asked of Mr. Damon, as their party stood on a corner of the veranda, looking at the spreading flames, as yet far below them but inexorably creeping nearer.

“We ought to get away from here!” said Mr. Damon. “There are cars in the garage, and if we can’t take all our things we can take some.”

“How can we get through that ring of fire?” asked Mr. Nestor, pointing to it. “Out of the question! We can only wait until the fire fighters beat out the flames on a path by which we can get through. We are safer here than we would be down there.”

“It is coming nearer,” said his wife.

“Yes,” he admitted in a grave voice, “it is coming nearer!”

Mrs. Jardine swept up to the group.

“I am going to telephone my husband by long distance,” she announced.

“What good will that do?” Mr. Nestor asked.

“I don’t know. But I must tell him that we are in danger—we, his wife and children and all of us are in grave danger.”

She hurried toward the office. The air was now beginning to be acrid with smoke and odors from the burning trees.

“For that matter I might telephone Tom,” said Mary in a low voice. “But what good would it do?”

“Nothing can do any good until the wardens and their men put out the fire all about us,” her father said.

Helpless and alarmed, the guests paced the verandas or walked nervously about the grounds adjacent to the hotel. Mrs. Jardine came hurrying back to Mary and her people. It was now beginning to get daylight.

“I got my husband on the wire!” exclaimed the woman. “I told him we were surrounded by flames and asked him if there was no way to get help to us to rescue us.”

“What did he say?” asked Mary.

“I couldn’t hear him very well in the first place, and then the wire was suddenly broken or cut.”

“Or burned through,” said Mr. Damon.

They looked at one another helplessly in the smoke and flame-reddened light of the early morning. Just then there was a piercing cry of alarm from an outer wing of the hotel. As all ran in that direction they saw a big mass of flame and cinder come sailing through the air from the forest of fire down below. This flaming mass fell into a great pine tree, not far from the hotel, and in a moment the pine was a glowing torch of fire.

“I’m afraid this is the beginning of the end,” said Mr. Nestor solemnly, as he stood close to his wife and daughter.

“Quick! Run out the hose!” commanded Mr. Thorndyke to his emergency fire-fighting squad. “The hotel will catch from that burning pine if we don’t put it out! Hurry!”

A MESSAGE OF HOPE

“There’s the fire all right!” shouted Tom Swift to Ned Newton, who was riding in the cockpit of the Wasp behind him as they circled over the mountain.

“Burning fast!” remarked Ned. “It’s a big blaze.”

“It hasn’t reached the hotel yet,” went on Tom. “If the wind holds this way it may not.”

Ned looked down with appraising eyes. He wanted to keep Tom’s spirits up, for he knew much would depend on the young inventor if he was to save his wife, his father, and others imperiled at the hotel surrounded by fire, and yet Tom must know the full extent of the danger.

“The wind holding one way won’t do much good when the fire is all around the hotel—as it is,” Ned remarked.

“That’s so,” agreed Tom. “This is awful!”

They had made a quick trip from Shopton in the speedy little airplane, leaving Lawrence Jardine, frantic and half crazed with anxiety, to await their return.

It was now close to noon, and in the broad light of day great clouds of smoke billowing over the mountain on which the hotel was situated could be seen. With the smoke were long flashes of fire.

“Better head up a bit, Tom!” called Ned to Tom, as they started down when almost over the hotel. “Here comes a lot of smoke.”

The wind was blowing a great cloud of hot, white, acrid vapor toward the Wasp, and Tom shifted the controls which speedily sent the fast craft up above into a clearer atmosphere. There a broader view could be had of the great forest fire. Its proportions amazed Tom and his chum.

“The whole place will go!” cried Ned.

“Looks so,” agreed Tom. “But we’ve got to do something to save them—save my family and the others!”

“There’s the hotel!” cried Ned, as another shift of the wind dispersed the hovering clouds of smoke and revealed the big hostelry plainly.

With a sudden movement of the stick, Tom Swift sent his airplane down until he and Ned could make out men, women, and children circling about the buildings. It was as though they sought a way through the ever narrowing ring of fire.

“Take control, Ned!” Tom suddenly called, for the Wasp was fitted for dual management.

“What are you going to do?” Ned asked.

“Write a note and drop it down there for Mary!” Tom replied. “Some one will pick it up and give it to her.”

“A note?” Ned questioned, as he grasped the levers.

“Yes. I must warn her and the others not to try to get down the mountain. They’ll only run into the fire which is all around them.”

“But they’ve got to get away!” cried Ned. “The fire is sweeping up toward the hotel!”

“Yes, I know. But they can’t be saved that way.”

“How can they be saved?”

“Only by the big dirigible, Ned. We’ll go back and get it and fly it here. I can be up here with it in a few hours. I want to keep Mary and the others in or around the hotel until then. It is their only chance. If they try to go down the mountain, it means death!”

“And a horrible death!” murmured Ned.

Tom quickly wrote the note. He weighted it with a spare bolt and fastened it to his handkerchief by the four corners so that, in effect, he had a small parachute. Then, watching his chance, while Ned directed the Wasp over the ball field and while the crowd of fear-stricken guests below watched, Tom Swift dropped his message of hope.

He saw the note with its handkerchief parachute land on the ball field and several run to pick it up. Tom could not distinguish his wife, his father, or the Nestors, but he had no doubt that they were there, as Mary and Mr. Swift must have recognized the Wasp. It was painted in distinctive colors and bore the Swift trademark on the underside of its wings.

“That’s all we can do now,” Tom remarked, as he again took charge.

“What’s next?” Ned wanted to know.

“Back to Shopton to get the big dirigible!” said Tom. “It’s the only way to save them.”

“If you try to land her down there, in that circle of fire, she’ll explode her gas!” exclaimed Ned.

“I’m not going to land,” Tom said.

“How else can you make any rescues?”

“I have a plan,” was all Tom said, and he pointed the nose of the Wasp toward Shopton. Never before had the machine been sent through the air so fast.

As Tom Swift and Ned Newton flew away from the mountain of fire, they could see, down below them, hundreds of forest rangers and their crews and neighborhood men fighting desperately to stem the tide of the flames or to block them from eating their way up to the summit where the hotel was perched.

Trenches were being dug in the earth, and the soil was being spread over the carpet of leaves and pine needles in which the fire ate its way along the ground to break out in a dozen new spots.

Hundreds of men, with flails made from burlap bags dipped into water brought from a distance, were beating out spots of flame here and there. Above all hovered that choking pall of smoke.

“Wonder how that fire started?” murmured Tom.

“Some careless camper, probably,” was Ned’s opinion.

“There must have been a hundred campers to make the fire spread so rapidly and in so big a circle,” said Tom. “No, it was some other cause than a camper.” As yet he and Ned had not heard the story of the oil tank driver.

They made a quick landing in the yard near the shop where Tom had his office and not far from the hangar of the big dirigible.

“Well, have you seen them? Are they safe?” cried Lawrence Jardine, as he rushed frantically out of Tom’s office where he had been impatiently awaiting the return of the Wasp.

“I have seen them,” gasped Tom Swift. “But they are far from safe! They are in great danger!” He rapidly told what he and Ned had observed.

“They must be saved!” cried Mr. Jardine. “Use the big dirigible, Mr. Swift. Save my wife and children and I will do anything in the world for you—anything!” He held out his hands appealingly.

“I will do my best,” said Tom. “I want to save my own family as well as yours. I also want to save the other people.”

“How can you do it?”

“By using the big dirigible. It is the only way. It may cost us the airship and our lives, even to make the attempt above that awful forest of fire, but it is the only way.”

“I’m with you! Tell me what to do!” cried Mr. Jardine.

“We must work fast,” Tom said. “Luckily, the ship is ready to take the air, but I must rig up a device for getting the people on board. I shall not be able to descend to the ground. I’ll need a crew. I must call for volunteers among my men. Those who go in the Silver Cloud to the forest of fire may never come back. Each man risks his life. I will ask no man to go—they must volunteer!”

The alarm signal was sounded, bringing the men from the distant shops, and when they were assembled in the big yard Tom rapidly told them the circumstances and spoke of the great danger.

“Will some of you go with me to the rescue?” he asked.

There was a moment of hesitation. Then, from the outer edge of the crowd of workmen, a voice cried:

“Count me in.”

A little man—a dwarf—wriggled through the press and stood before Tom Swift.

“Chock!” cried the young inventor.

“At your service!” said the dwarf, with his grotesque smile. “Oh, I know I acted like a fool, Mr. Swift,” he hastened to say as he saw objection on Tom’s face. “But I did nothing wrong to you or yours, and I can prove it. Let me make amends by being the first to volunteer. I’m not afraid!”

Tom hesitated, but in that instant out stepped Koku from where he towered above the other men.

“Little man um go—big man um go!” cried the giant. “I be volteer too! Giant and dwarf both go!” He stood beside Chock, the contrast being grotesque and almost laughable in spite of the tragic situation. Then there broke out a cheer from the workmen and voices here and there cried:

“I’ll go!”

“Count on me!”

“Don’t leave me out!”

“We’re all with you, Mr. Swift!”

In a few minutes a volunteer crew had been selected and Tom began to issue his orders.

“Are you really going to take that dwarf?” asked Ned.

“Of course,” Tom answered. “Perhaps I have done him an injustice, or it may have all been Martin Jardine’s fault. But I’ll take Chock. He saved the day by volunteering first. He started the others. Now I’ve got to get the cage ready.”

“Cage? What cage?”

“A big metal cage that can be lowered from the dirigible by a chain and windlass to save those at the hotel. It is the only way!”

THE METAL CAGE

There was so much to do and in such a rush, that for two hours Ned Newton had no chance to talk further with Tom Swift about the desirability of taking along the dwarf Chock. When at last, after the metal cage was being hurried to completion, Ned made the inquiry, Tom said:

“That dwarf with his small frame and immense strength may be of great service to us. In a way, he may be as good as Koku.”

“But can you trust him?” asked Ned.

“That I’ll find out right away,” said Tom. “I’ve got a few seconds now to catch my breath, and we’ll settle the question. Whether or not he tried to play tricks on me, in conjunction with Martin Jardine, I have a kindly feeling toward the dwarf, for he appeared in the nick of time and started the volunteers.”

“Yes,” agreed Ned. “I wonder why he appeared as he did—in the nick of time? Can Martin Jardine be hanging around?”

“We’ll find out if we can,” Tom said, and sent Eradicate to tell Mr. Jackson to have Chock appear in the private office.

The dwarf came, sweaty and dirty, for he seemed to have been laboring like a Trojan.

“Chock,” began Tom abruptly, “while I’m glad to admit you did me a service by volunteering, I needn’t tell you that your conduct up to now has been very suspicious, and more than once I think you have been trying to gain access to the works here.”

“You’re right, Mr. Swift, I have been doing some crooked work. Rather, I tried to do it for Martin Jardine. But I’m through with him for good and all now. I’m working for you, and I’ll work faithfully to save your wife and father and others in the burning hotel.”

“Let us hope it isn’t burning yet,” said Tom.

“What about that forest fire?” cried Ned. “Did you have anything to do with it, Chock?”

“Of course I didn’t! What do you think I am—a fiend or a madman? What makes you ask such a question as that?”

“Because of something Pietro Notine told me,” said Tom.

“Pietro Notine?”

“Yes. Did you once work for that marionette showman?”

“I did, yes; and I’m sorry to say I made a fool of myself. I got drunk when I was playing engagements in theaters and afterward working in his show. But that’s the worst I did—getting drunk—and I’m off that now forever. I’ve taken a solemn pledge.”

“What about setting fire to his marionettes?” asked Tom sternly.

“I never did it intentionally. I was drunk and went to sleep with a cigarette in my mouth—very wicked and foolish. It started a fire; but I woke up when I felt myself scorched, and helped put the fire out. Then I ran away. I wouldn’t for the world have done it intentionally. But those marionettes got on my nerves.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ned.

“Well, there was one dwarf marionette and I always thought he was meant to poke fun at me. I know now he wasn’t, but I was drinking and I imagined all sorts of foolish things. That marionette dwarf made me drink harder, and then came the fire and I skipped out. After that I went to work for Mr. Jardine, though I didn’t stop drinking right away. But I’m through now.”

“What was the game you and Martin Jardine tried to play? Was it to damage my dirigible?” asked Tom.

“No,” the dwarf answered. “But Martin Jardine is queer, and when he found out his brother had called a halt on the big airship, he wanted me to slip in and take away certain parts without which he thought it could not run. He thought he could force his brother to a compromise by hampering you. But it didn’t work.”

“No,” said Tom. “Such a trick would never work with me. Then you and this Martin Jardine visited the plant one night?”

“Yes, and we had trouble in getting away,” Chock said. “It was after that I decided to go straight, and I quit Jardine. But I never set any forest fire and I never would have done anything to damage your dirigible more than temporarily. But I’ll be true to you now! I’ll risk my life to help save your folks and in that way I’ll make up for what I’ve done. I hope you’ll tell Mr. Notine I didn’t mean to start that fire in his show.”

“I’ll tell him,” promised Tom.

He and Ned were both impressed with the sincerity of the dwarf, and after a consultation with Lawrence Jardine, who bore out some of what Chock had said regarding the irresponsibility of Martin, it was decided to let the little man accompany them.

“But you must have no further quarrels with Koku!” warned Tom.

“I won’t,” the dwarf promised. “He can make all the fun of me he wants to and I’ll never say a word.”

But Koku was too busy even to notice the little man, for there was much need of the giant’s strength. Great beams of steel that would have needed a small derrick to put in place in building the cage were lifted around more quickly by Koku, and in this way the work was hastened. Chock, too, was able to use his powerful muscles in narrow quarters where other men found it impossible to gain access. So the two extremes of human life, the dwarf and the giant, labored together on the steel cage that Tom hoped to use in saving those at the fire-encircled hotel.

Between the hours of rushing work Tom was in communication with the forest rangers’ headquarters by telephone. Everything possible was being done to check the fire, but the forests were so dry from lack of rain that the conflagration was steadily sweeping upward.

“It looks as if the hotel is doomed,” was the message Tom had over the long distance wire. He tried again and again to get in touch with the hotel itself over the wire, but as Mrs. Jardine had said, the copper circuit was cut or burned.

“Did you think Chock set that fire?” asked Ned of his chum, when Tom, directing a gang of men who were getting the dirigible ready, stopped for a moment.

“Oh, at first the thought entered my mind; but he couldn’t have got here so soon after setting it except by airplane, and I don’t believe he came that way.”

“I wonder if the fire was set, and who did it?” mused Ned.

“That we may never find out,” answered Tom.

“Do you think it could have been Martin Jardine?”

“No. He wouldn’t be crazy enough for that—to put in danger his brother’s wife and children. It’s queer, though, why he hasn’t shown up here lately.”

At last, later in the afternoon, the metal cage was finished. A chain from the top went around a drum driven by an electric motor aboard the Silver Cloud. By this means, through a trapdoor in the bottom of the dirigible, the cage could be lowered to the ground and pulled up again into the interior of the big airship.

“It’s a small cage to save a whole hotel full of people,” said Tom. “But it’s as large as we dared make it.”

“How much chain have you?” Ned asked.

“About two hundred feet. I daren’t go any closer than that to the ground if there is fire near,” Tom said. “Well, I think we are ready to leave,” he added, as he hurried about the dirigible, making sure that everything was in shape.

At last, with the metal cage in place, the Silver Cloud, manned by the brave volunteers, including Lawrence Jardine, the giant, and the dwarf, left the ground and was headed for the burning mountain. It was one of the hardest things Tom Swift ever did to refuse Eradicate permission to go. But with the desperate work ahead, it was no place for the aged Negro.

“Yo’ cain’t save yo’ pa wifout me, Massa Tom, an’ yo’ knows it!” wailed Eradicate, as the ship sailed without him. But it had to be.

With her motors running at top speed, the big dirigible was pointed toward Mt. Camon and in about two hours a rolling cloud of murky haze told the young navigator and his volunteer crew that they were again near the burning forest.

“Now to save them if we can!” cried Tom, as he flew through the smoke over the forest of flames.

“You’re flying too high,” said Ned. “Your chain is only two hundred feet.”

“I know!” Tom exclaimed. “We’ve got to go lower. It’s flirting with death, but it must be done!”

OUT OF THE FLAMES

With the bursting into flames of the great pine tree so near the hotel wing, a new danger threatened those imprisoned by the circle of forest fire. Yet it was not so much a new danger as an extension of that already menacing them.

“Quick with that hose!” cried Mr. Thorndyke, as his crew of amateur firemen responded to the summons. “Hurry, men!”

“Can any of us help?” asked Mr. Damon.

“We’ll do our share,” added Mr. Nestor.

“You may have to—later,” said the manager, as he directed his men. “This is an isolated blaze at present. It will easily be put out. But the fire from below is drawing nearer. Unless the wardens and their men can check it, I don’t see what is to become of us!”

By this time the water was spurting through the hose that had been run out through a lower door. The hotel was provided with great tanks on the roof, thus affording a gravity supply to different rooms. But the long, dry season had depleted the springs from which water was pumped to the roof tanks, so they were not more than half full.

Suddenly, just as the first sprays of water were directed at the blazing pine tree, the forest giant exploded with a loud report. The heated pitch and other sap within had reached a temperature where they must expand, and they did so, rending the bark and trunk.

This explosion, which felled the tree, sent more masses of blazing material in every direction, and for a moment it looked as if that whole wing of the hotel would catch fire, even though the actual burning forest was some distance down the mountain side.

“Run out another hose!” ordered Mr. Thorndyke; and when this had been done, the blaze, after hard work, was sufficiently wet down to afford temporary relief.

However, all this time the circle of fire about the seemingly doomed hotel was slowly growing closer. The conflagration was eating its way up the mountain, as well as down, but more slowly in the latter direction, as the wind was sweeping toward the summit.

“They should make a back-fire!” declared Mr. Damon, who, with the other guests, including Mr. Swift, Mary, and her parents, was watching the progress of the fire from a veranda. “It’s the only way.”

“I think they are doing that,” said Mr. Nestor.

Mr. Swift said nothing, but every now and then he would look up toward the smoke-obscured sky, trying to pierce the murky haze.

“What are you looking for?” asked Mary, coming to his side.

“For my son Tom,” answered the aged inventor. “He said in his note that he would save us.”

“And he will, too! I am sure of it!” declared Mary earnestly.

“Then he must make haste,” said the old man in a low voice. “It is getting hard to breathe up here. Don’t you feel the heated air, Mary? It is getting closer—the fire!”

“Oh, I hardly think the air is any hotter than it was two hours ago,” Mary answered, more because she wanted to reassure the old man than because she really believed it. She felt a sense of oppression and she did have difficulty in breathing, just as Mr. Swift had.

“He can’t be long now,” went on Tom’s father, his weary eyes scanning the sky. “Do you see anything of an airplane, Mary?”

“Not yet, Father. But it would have to be a very big airplane to save all at this hotel, even if he could land and take a few in at a time. How do you think Tom will manage?”

“I don’t know. But he’ll find a way,” said the old man. “I’ll leave it to my son Tom. He’ll know what to do.”

“Yes,” said Mary softly.

“If he had the big aerial warship that we sold to the government, that might do,” went on Mr. Swift. “I wonder if Tom thinks of that? But the warship is far away. However, he might get another big craft from the government and come for us in that.”

“If he comes at all, I think it will be in the new dirigible,” said Mary.

“Oh, Tom will come!” his father declared. “But he would not dare hover the dirigible above the forest of fire.”

“Why not?”

“The gas in it would explode. It would mean death for all on board. But Tom will save us somehow.”

With weary eyes, the anxious ones in the hotel looked first to the efforts of the men below them, fighting the flames, and again toward the sky, for the message Tom had dropped from the Wasp had been picked up, carried to Mary, and had been eagerly read aloud, so that all in the hotel knew its contents and looked for the young inventor to save them. How, they did not know, nor did even Tom’s friends. So they could only wait and hope while the fire hemmed them in closer and closer.

The crackling of the flames could now be plainly heard by those on the hotel grounds and verandas. Every one was outside, for it could not be told at what moment some burning masses might be wafted by the wind and fall on the roof, to set it ablaze.

No one thought of eating, though some of the cooks had prepared a breakfast. A few took coffee, but it was no time to spend over food. When the blazing pine tree had been well doused with water, Mr. Thorndyke sent a crew of men with a hose up to the roof to watch for an outbreak of flames there.

Meanwhile, Tom Swift and Ned Newton, in charge of the big dirigible, had guided the craft until by afternoon it was directly over the hotel, with the circle of fire ever drawing tighter. For a time the smoke was so thick that it obscured the woods and the buildings, and more than once, as Tom gave the signal to descend, such a blast of heated air, tipped with red flames, arose that he had to increase his gas pressure and go up.

“Looks as if we couldn’t make it, Tom,” gasped Ned, for some smoke had gotten into the control cabin.

“We’ve got to make it!” was the fierce answer.

“My fortune is yours if you save my wife and children!” cried Mr. Jardine.

“That looks like an opening,” Ned cried, pointing down through a rift which appeared in the pall of smoke. “If the wind only holds that way for a time, we can go down and let them know we have come to save them.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Tom Swift, and he gave the signal for going down.

Fortunately the wind held, and, for a time at least, the summit of the mountain was comparatively free of the hot, white vapor.

The airship went down rapidly, almost as straight as a descending elevator. It was now within a few hundred feet of the hotel, and suddenly, above a temporary lull in the crackling of the flames, voices from below cried:

“There it is!”

“The big airship!”

“Tom Swift has come to save us!”

Mary, her parents, Mr. Swift, and Mr. Damon heard the cries of joy and hastened toward the rear of the hotel whence came the shouts and on toward the ball field, the largest space around the hotel where there were no trees or shrubbery to catch fire.

“Yes, that’s Tom!” cried Mary, recognizing the big dirigible. She waved her hands and kissed them to Tom, but it is doubtful if he saw her.

Slowly the giant of the clouds descended lower and lower.

Then came a cry of despair from a crowd at the rear of the hotel. A great mass of blazing material, matted together, came floating up, borne by a strong wind and, landing in a pile of broken boxes and other débris piled near the main building of the hotel, set it on fire.

“The hose! The hose!” came the appeal.

But before the men with the hose could run the nozzle of it around to the new point of danger the dry wooden structure of the hotel, parched by many days of hot sunshine, had burst into flames almost with the rapidity of an explosion.

“The place is doomed now!” cried Mr. Damon.

“Only Tom Swift and his big dirigible can save us!” exclaimed Mr. Nestor.

Leaving the end of the hotel to burn, and knowing the fire would soon communicate to the entire structure, the guests and help gathered at the ball field, looking up to observe the Silver Cloud.

The crowd had no sooner reached the place than flames broke out in the trees and bushes around the ball field. So with one end of the hotel afire and the underbrush at the edges of the recreation ground burning, the guests were fairly hemmed in.

“Get shovels and dig up the field!” cried Mr. Thorndyke. “If we can make a wide enough patch of bare earth the flames may not cross it. Dig, everybody!”

Shovels were hastily procured and the men and even some of the women, Mary and Mrs. Nestor among them, worked desperately to keep the fire from their little patch of safety. It was an island in a sea of flames.

Tom’s airship was now directly above the flames and was coming still lower.

“He’ll explode if he comes down any further!” cried Mr. Swift. “That gas can stand so much heat and no more! Go back, Tom! Go back!”

But the Silver Cloud came lower and lower, closer to the raging fire that was now consuming the north end of the hotel. Below and all around was a seething caldron of leaping flames.

The dirigible was soon within two hundred feet of the ground. Tom Swift dared not go lower. But it was enough. He gave the word:

“Lower the metal cage!”