up the craft.

"There she is!" he cried, peering down through the plate glass
window in the floor of the motor room. "It's a small gasolene boat,
and there are several men in her! She's having a hard time."

"Can we rescue them?" asked Mr. Damon.

"If anybody can, Tom Swift will," was Ned's reply. Then came a
whistle from the speaking tube, that led to the pilot house.

"What is it?" asked Ned, putting the tube to his ear.

"Stand by for a rescue!" ordered Tom, who had also, through a window
in the floor of the pilot house, seen the hapless motor boat. The
men in it were frantically waving their hands to those on the
airship. "I'm going down as close as I dare," went on Tom. "You
watch, and when it's time, have Koku drop from the stern a long,
knotted rope. That will be a sort of ladder, and they can make it
fast to their boat and climb up, hand over hand. It's the only
plan."

"Good!" cried Ned. "Send Koku to me. Can you manage alone in the
pilot house?"

"Yes," came back the answer through the tube.

Koku came back on the run, and was soon tying knots in a strong
rope. Meanwhile Ned kept the light on the tossing boat, while Tom,
through a megaphone had called to the men to stand by to be rescued.
The whistle frantically tooted their thanks.

Koku went out on the after deck, and, having made the knotted rope
fast, dropped the end overboard. Then began a difficult feature of
airship steering. Tom, looking down through the glass, watched the
boat in the glare of the light. Now coming forward, now reversing
against the rush of the wind; now going up, and now down, the young
inventor so directed the course of his airship so that, finally, the
rope dragged squarely across the tossing boat.

In a trice the men grabbed it, and made it fast. Then Tom had
another difficult task--that of not allowing the rope to become
taut, or the drag of the boat, and the uplift of the airship might
have snapped it in twain. But he handled his delicate craft of the
air as confidently as the captain of a big liner brings her
skillfully to the deck against wind and tide.

"Climb up! Climb up!" yelled Tom, through the megaphone, and he saw,
not a man, but a woman, ascending the knotted rope, hand over hand,
toward the airship that hovered above her head.

CHAPTER XVI

KOKU'S PRISONER

"Bless my knitting needles!" cried Mr. Damon, as he looked down, and
saw, in the glare of the great light, the figure of the woman
cli