said the young inventor, calmly. "But we can't do
anything now. You can hardly hear her, let alone see her. She's
moving fast!"

He pointed upward to the darkness. Like some black bird of prey
the airship was already lost to sight, though it would have seemed
as if her white planes might render her visible. But she had moved
so swiftly that, during the short search, she had already
disappeared.

"Aren't you going to do anything?" asked Ned.

"Certainly," spoke Tom. "I'm going to telephone an alarm to all
the nearby towns. This is certainly a queer game, Ned."

CHAPTER XII

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE

Disappointed and puzzled, Tom and Ned went to where Koku was
standing in rather a dazed attitude. The giant, like all large
bodies, moved slowly, not only bodily but mentally. He could
understand exactly what had happened, except that he had not
prevailed over the "pygmies" who had attacked him. They had been
too many for him.

"Let's take a look inside," suggested Tom, when, by another glance
upward, he had made sure that all trace of his big airship was
gone. "Maybe we can get a clue. Then, Koku, you tell us what
happened."

"It all happened to me," said the giant, simply. "Me no make
anything happen to them."

"That's about right," laughed Tom, ruefully. "It all happened to
us."

The lights in the hangar were switched on, but a careful search
revealed little. The men, half a dozen or more, had come evidently
well prepared for the taking away of Tom Swift's airship, and they
had done so.

Entrance had been effected by forcing a small side door. True, the
burglar alarm had given notice of the presence of the men, but Tom
and Ned had not acted quite quickly enough. Koku had been at the
hangar almost as soon as the men themselves, but he had watched
and waited for orders, instead of going in at once, and this had
given the intruders time to wheel out the craft and start the
motor.

"Why didn't you jump right in on them when you saw what they were
up to, Koku?" asked Tom.

"Me wait for master. Me think master want to see who men were. Me
go in--they run."

"Well, of course that's so, in a way," admitted Tom. "They
probably would have run, but they'd have run WITHOUT my airship
instead of WITH it, if they hadn't had time to get it outside the
hangar. However, there's no use in crying over lost biplanes. The
next thing is how to get her back. Did you know any of the men,
Koku?"

"No, master."