Then the voice died away to silence.
CHAPTER X
TOM’S PLIGHT
Desperation gave Tom Swift unusual strength as he lay bound and seemingly helpless in that upper story of the lonely cabin. Though the ropes about his wrists and ankles seemed very tight, he had a feeling as he strained his arms that he was going to get free. That talk he heard, floating up from the room below where, through the crack, he could see the conspirators gathered, gave him fierce energy.
“So that’s their game, is it?” mused Tom, as he heard the plot to blow up the plant. “They want to put me out of the way so they will have a free hand to wreck my plant and get the plans and models of the airline express cars and airships. I don’t believe they ever thought of inventing that sort of combination craft themselves. They are trying to steal my ideas. Kenny and Schlump must have hatched the plot. Oh, but I’ve got to get loose and warn Dad and Ned!”
It was this very necessity for quick action that emboldened Tom and gave him the fierce energy to struggle to get free of his bonds. He was glad the gag had come loose, for with that in his mouth, hindering his breathing, he could not have worked as hard as he did—he would have suffocated.
But now he could breathe easily, and he had need of all his spare wind in the exertions that followed the overhearing of the plot of the men who had captured him.
Luckily ropes, however strong, are capable of being stretched if one pulls on them long enough and often enough. And though it hurt Tom to force his bare wrists against the hemp strands, he kept at it until he found he could move his hands more freely. He wished he might find a projecting nail or some sharp object in his prison, against which he could rub his bonds to sever them. But he dared not roll about much for fear of making a noise and so bringing his captors upstairs. Once they discovered that he was making an attempt to escape, they might chain him fast or move him to some other prison whence it would not be so easy to get away.
“Once I’m free of these ropes I know I can get out,” Tom told himself. “I’m only on the second floor, I can tell that, for I counted the stairs as they carried me up. And if I can get a window open I can jump to the ground, if I don’t find some sort of a vine or a rain-water pipe that I can climb down. But the first thing to do is to get these ropes off my hands and feet.”
Tom knew that once his hands were freed it would be a comparatively easy matter to loosen the ropes on his ankles. All his energies, then, must center on his hands. They were tied behind his back, with several coils of rope wound about the wrists. Again and again Tom strained on these until, at last, he felt that he could draw out one hand.
It was not easy, even when he had done this much, but he kept at it, and finally had one hand altogether freed. The exertion had made him sweat and had tired him greatly. He panted for breath as he lay there, while below him he could hear the murmuring voices of the plotters.