Tom Swift And His Submarine Boat

Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat, or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure, is Volume 4 in the original Tom Swift novel series.

Tom Swift's father has been working diligently on a secret project, which he reveals at the beginning of the book as a submarine. With the submarine, named the Advance, he planned to enter it in a contest for a government prize of $50,000. While in New Jersey to launch the submarine, Tom notes in a news paper that a ship named the Boldero sank off the coast of Uruguay during a storm, taking down with it the sum of $300,000 in gold bullion.

Tom Swift And His Submarine Boat

by Victor Appleton


CONTENTS
I News of a Treasure Wreck
II Finishing the Submarine
III Mr. Berg Is Astonished
IV Tom Is Imprisoned
V Mr. Berg Is Suspicious
VI Turning the Tables
VII Mr. Damon Will Go
VIII Another Treasure Expedition
IX Captain Weston's Advent
X Trial of the Submarine
XI On the Ocean Bed
XII For a Breath of Air
XIII Off for the Treasure
XIV In the Diving Suits
XV At the Tropical Island
XVI "We'll Race You For It!"
XVII The Race
XVIII The Electric Gun
XIX Captured
XX Doomed to Death
XXI The Escape
XXII At the Wreck
XXIII Attacked by Sharks
XXIV Ramming the Wreck
XXV Home with the Gold






TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT




Chapter One

News of a Treasure Wreck


There was a rushing, whizzing, throbbing noise in the air.
A great body, like that of some immense bird, sailed along,
casting a grotesque shadow on the ground below. An elderly
man, who Was seated on the porch of a large house, started
to his feet in alarm.

"Gracious goodness! What was that, Mrs. Baggert?" he
called to a motherly-looking woman who stood in the doorway.
"What happened?"

"Nothing much, Mr. Swift," was the calm reply "I think
that was Tom and Mr. Sharp in their airship, that's all. I
didn't see it, but the noise sounded like that of the Red Cloud."

"Of course! To be sure!" exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift, the
well-known inventor, as he started down the path in order to
get a good view of the air, unobstructed by the trees. "Yes,
there they are," he added. "That's the airship, but I didn't
expect them back so soon. They must have made good time from
Shopton. I wonder if anything can be the matter that they
hurried so?"

He gazed aloft toward where a queerly-shaped machine was
circling about nearly five hundred feet in the air, for the
craft, after Swooping down close to the house, had ascended
and was now hovering just above the line of breakers that
marked the New Jersey seacoast, where Mr. Swift had taken up
a temporary residence.

"Don't begin worrying, Mr. Swift," advised Mrs. Baggert,
the housekeeper. "You've got too much to do, if you get that
new boat done, to worry."

"That's so. I must not worry. But I wish Tom and Mr. Sharp
would land, for I want to talk to them."

As if the occupants of the airship had heard the words of
the aged inventor, they headed their craft toward earth. The
combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon, a most wonderful
traveler of the air, swung around, and then, with the
deflection rudders slanted downward, came on with a rush.
When near the landing place, just at the side of the house,
the motor was stopped, and the gas, with a hissing noise,
rushed into the red aluminum container. This immediately
made the ship more buoyant and it landed almost as gently as
a feather.

No sooner had the wheels which formed the lower part of
the craft touched the ground than there leaped from the
cabin of the Red Cloud a young man.

"Well, dad!" he exclaimed. "Here we are again, safe and
sound. Made a record, too. Touched ninety miles an hour at
times--didn't we, Mr. Sharp?"

"That's what," agreed a tall, thin, dark-complexioned man,
who followed Tom Swift more leisurely in his exit from the
cabin. Mr. Sharp, a veteran aeronaut, stopped to fasten guy
ropes from the airship to strong stakes driven into the
ground.