u!" yelled Tom again. "Be careful and don't hurt him till
I get there!"

He could not see what the giant was doing. The timber was thicker down
here. It might be that the giant would seize the man roughly. His zeal
in Tom's cause was great, and, of course, his strength was enormous.

Yet Tom did not want to call the giant off the trail. Andy O'Malley
must be captured at this time. He had done enough, too much, indeed, in
attempting the ruin of Tom's plans. Before the matter went any further
the young inventor was determined that Montagne Lewis' spy should be
put where he would be able to do no more harm.

But he did not want the man permanently injured. He knew now that Koku
was so wildly excited that he might set upon O'Malley as he would upon
an enemy in his own country.

"Koku! Stop! Wait for me!" Tom finally shouted.

Now the young inventor got no reply from the giant. Had the latter got
so far ahead that he no longer heard his master's command?

Tom pounded on, working his legs like pistons, putting every last ounce
of energy he possessed into his effort. This was indeed a desperate
chase.

Chapter XXIII

Mr. Damon at Bay

Mr. Wakefield Damon was a very odd and erratic gentleman, but he did
not lack courage. He was much more disturbed by the possible injury to
Tom Swift's invention by this collision with the bumper at the end of
the timber siding than he had been by his own danger at the time of the
accident.

He did not understand enough about the devices Tom had built in the
forward end of the locomotive cab to understand, by any casual
examination, if they were at all injured. But when he climbed down
beside the track he saw at once that the forward end of the locomotive
had received more than a little injury.

The pilot, or cow-catcher, looked more like an iron cobweb than it did
like anything else. The wheels of the forward trucks had not left the
track, but the impact of the heavy locomotive with the bumper had been
so great that the latter was torn from its foundations. A little more
and the electric locomotive would have shot off the end of the rails
into the ditch.

While Mr. Damon was examining the front of the locomotive, and Tom and
Ned remained absent, he suddenly observed a group of men hurrying out
of the forest on the other side of the H. & P. A. right of way. They
were not railroad men--at least, they were not dressed in uniform--but
they were drawn immediately to the locom