ou can use the shops here as much as you want, and Mr. Sharp, Mr.
Jackson, and I will help you all we can. Only don't be disappointed,
that's all."

"I won't, Dad. Suppose you come out to my shop and I'll show you a
sample battery I've been testing for the last week. I have it geared to
a small motor, and it's been running steadily for some time. I want to
see what sort of a record it's made."

Father and son crossed the yard, and entered a shop which the lad
considered exclusively his own. There he had made many machines, and
pieces of apparatus, and had invented a number of articles which had
been patented, and yielded him considerable of an income.

"There's the battery, Dad," he said, pointing to a complicated
mechanism in one corner.

"What's that buzzing noise?" asked Mr. Swift. "That's the little motor
I run from the new cells. Look here," and Tom switched on an electric
light above the experimental battery, from which he hoped so much. It
consisted of a steel can, about the size of the square gallon tin in
which maple syrup comes, and from it ran two wires which were attached
to a small motor that was industriously whirring away.

Tom looked at a registering gauge connected with it.

"That's pretty good," remarked the young inventor.

"What is it, Tom?" and his father peered about the shop.

"Why this motor has run an equivalent of two hundred miles on one
charging of the battery! That's much better than I expected. I thought
if I got a hundred out of it I'd be doing well. Dad, I believe, after I
improve my battery a bit, that I'll have the very thing I want! I'll
install a set of them in a car, and it will go like the wind. I'll--"
Tom's enthusiastic remarks were suddenly interrupted by a low, rumbling
sound.

"Thunder!" exclaimed Mr. Swift. "The storm is coming, and Mr. Sharp and
Mr. Damon in the airship--"

Hardly had he spoken than there sounded a crash on the roof of the
Swift house, not far away. At the same time there came cries of
distress, and the crash was repeated.

"Come on, Dad! Something has happened!" yelled Tom, dashing from the
shop, followed by his parent. They found themselves in the midst of a
rain storm, as they raced toward the house, on the roof of which the
smashing noise was again heard.

CHAPTER II

MR. DAMON'S STEERING

Tom Swift was a lad of action, and his quickness in hurrying out to
investigate what had happened when he was explaining about his new
bat