h a
searchlight at a fire, Tom? Isn't there light enough at a blaze,
anyhow?"

"No," answered the young inventor, as he made his usual skillful
landing. "You know all the big city fire departments have searchlights
now for night work and where there is thick smoke. It may be that some
day, in fighting a sky-scraper blaze from the clouds at night, I'll
have need of more illumination than comes from the flames themselves."

"Well, you ought to know. You've made a study of it," said Mr. Damon,
as he and Ned alighted with Tom, the latter receiving congratulations
from a number of his friends, including members of the Shopton fire
department who were present to witness the test.

"Mighty clever piece of work, Tom Swift!" declared a deputy chief. "Of
course we won't have much use for any such apparatus here in Shopton,
as we haven't any big buildings. But in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh
and other cities--why, it will be just what they need, to my way of
thinking."

"And he needn't go so far from home," said Mr. Damon. "There is one
tall building over in Newmarket--the Landmark. I happen to own a little
stock in the corporation that put that up, along with other buildings,
and I'm going to have them adopt Tom Swift's aerial fire-fighting
apparatus."

"Thank you. But you don't need to go to that trouble," asserted Tom.
"My idea isn't to have every sky-scraper equipped with an airship
extinguisher."

"No? What then?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Well, I think there ought to be one, or perhaps two, in a big city
like New York," Tom answered. "Perhaps one outfit would be enough, for
it isn't likely that there would be two big fires in the tall building
section at the same time, and an airship could easily cover the
distance between two widely separated blazes. But if I can perfect
this machine so it will be available for fires out of the reach of
apparatus on the ground, I'll be satisfied."

"You'll do it, Tom, don't worry about that!" declared the deputy chief.
"I never saw a slicker piece of work than this!"

And that was the verdict of all who had witnessed the performance.

With the successful completion of this exacting test and the
knowledge that he had perfected the major part of his aerial
fire-extinguisher--the chemical combination--Tom Swift was now able to
devote his attention to the "frills" as Ned called them. That is, he
could work out a scheme for attaching a searchlight to his airship and
make better arrange