Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
Language: English
Pages: 88
ISBN: 1490503110
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
While Tom Swift is working on his latest new invention, the electric rifle, he meets an African safari master whose stories of elephant hunting sends the group off to deepest, darkest Africa. Hunting for ivory is the least of their worries, as they find out some old friends are being held hostage by the fearsome tribes of the red pygmies. Swift builds two major inventions in this volume. The first is a replacement airship, known as The Black Hawk. This new airship is to replace The Red Cloud, which was destroyed during his adventures in Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice. This airship is of the same general construction as The Red Cloud, but is smaller and more maneuverable. Of foremost notice is Swift's invention of the electric rifle, a gun which fires bolts of electricity. The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa. With the electric rifle, Tom and friends bring down elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, and save their lives several times in pitched battle with the red pygmies. It also can discharge a globe of light that was described as being able to maintain itself, like ball lightning, making hunting at night much safer in the dark of Africa. In appearance, the rifle looked very much like contemporary conventional rifles.
youth, "and now I'll call in Mr. Jackson, and we'll talk about how soon we can have the airship ready." "My, but you folks are almost as speedy as a herd of the big elephants themselves!" exclaimed Mr. Durban, and with the advent of the engineer the talk turned to things mechanical among Tom and Mr. Jackson and Mr. Damon, while Mr. Durban told Mr. Swift hunting stories which the old inventor greatly enjoyed. The next day Tom engaged two machinists who had worked for him building airships before,
still fiercer energy. Some, more bold than the others, even leaped to the deck of the airship, and tried to tear the screens from the windows. They partly succeeded, and in one casement from which Ned was firing they made a hole. Into this they shot a flight of arrows, and one slightly wounded the bank clerk on the arm. The wound was at once treated with antiseptics, after the window had been barricaded, and Ned declared that he was ready to renew the fight. Tom, too, got an arrow scratch on the
He hurried to the engine−room, and turned on the power. The great propellers revolved, and sent the Black Hawk scudding across the level plain. With yells of surprise the red dwarfs scattered arid made way for it. Up into the air it mounted on the broad wings. For the time being our friends has been driven back, and the missionaries whom they had come to rescue were still in the hands of the savages. CHAPTER XXI. DRIVEN BACK 61 Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle CHAPTER XXII. A NIGHT ATTACK
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.
finish, for the shouts increased in volume, and Tom and Ned could hear some one yelling: "I'll have the law on you for this! I'll have you arrested, Tom Swift! What do you mean by trying to kill me? Where are you? Don't try to hide away, now. You were trying to shoot me, and I'm not going to have it!" Some one pounded on the door of the shed. "It's Barney Moker!" exclaimed Tom. "I wonder what can have happened?" CHAPTER II. TRYING THE NEW GUN 8 Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle CHAPTER III. A