“Well, we don’t know yet that the new Road Racer will perform the stunts we expect her to.”
“In which case, we are in for a cold, cold bath.”
“Cheer up, Tom,” laughed Jack. “Get busy now and finish up the pontoons with that aluminum paint. If the trial is set for this evening, we haven’t any too much time.”
Both boys fell to work again with feverish energy. The work of many weeks, carried on sometimes in high hope, sometimes in deep despondency, was before them in complete form, except for the final touches. Only the important experiment remained. Would the re-modelled Flying Road Racer do what the boys expected of her? If the answer to that question was in the affirmative, they knew that they had invented and carried to perfection the greatest craft of its kind hitherto known. The new craft would indeed merit her name of Wondership if she did what the boys confidently expected of her.
And what was this Wondership that had for weeks occupied every minute of the Boy Inventors’ time, exclusive of their studies in the Technical College that both attended in Boston? Readers of former volumes of this series will recall the Flying Road Racer, the air and land ship that had carried the boys and their friends faithfully so many miles, and in which they had encountered many stirring adventures. Well, the Wondership, as Jack in his enthusiasm had termed the craft, was nothing more nor less than the Flying Road Racer, altered almost beyond recognition.
The shed in which the changes had been carried out was located on a lonesome part of the seacoast not far from Nestorville, where the boys lived. But, remote as the spot was, it still was not far enough removed from human haunts to escape much speculation over what was going forward in the great, gaunt, unpainted shed among the sand-hills.
Inquisitive folks had watched wagons, laden with big crates and seemingly heavy boxes, making their way to the place at intervals; but so carefully had the shed been guarded and locked that nobody had as yet discovered the boys’ secret. Had anyone done so, it is certain that the two lads would have been besieged by curiosity seekers, for the craft on which they were working was the most ambitious thing that they had undertaken. The Wondership was nothing more nor less than an invention capable of travel by land, air and water. On land it rolled along on wheels, above the earth it depended on a large, gas-filled bag for buoyancy, while on the water (and this was the feature still untested), the boys hoped to make it float like a boat by means of pontoons.
Of course, the idea of pontoons as applied to aerial craft was by no means a novelty. Glen Curtiss, pioneer in this field, already had a fleet of successful hydro-aeroplanes, and many other inventors were laboring along these lines. It was in the application of the idea that the boys had radically departed from anything hitherto known. At the risk of being tedious we must now describe the Wondership at some length, in order that what is to follow of her marvelous adventures may be clear.
Readers of former books relating the experience of the Boy Inventors know that the Flying Road Racer was a craft built like an immense automobile with a semi-cylindrical body. It seated six persons, and at a pinch could accommodate more. The lower part of the cylinder was a big tank in which gas was generated from a concentrated powder which, upon being mixed with water, formed a vapor of extraordinary buoyancy. In the upper part were padded seats, storage chambers for food and supplies, and a machinery chamber housed under a hood.
Above this auto-like structure rose a framework of vanadium and aluminum alloy, on which was folded, when not in use, the gas-bag which lifted the Flying Road Racer from the earth when it was desired to fly. Pumps filled the bag with gas, or withdrew it, as was desired. Provision allowing for the expansion and contraction of the bag had also been made, as was fully described in another volume.