“I certainly did think a flying pterodactyl, or something of the kind, was swooping over those bushes to get me,” he declared.
“He’s sure wuss nor dat,” declared Rad solemnly. “He’s wuss nor a terrydicktil—sure is. He’s wuss dan a locofoco.”
Koku rolled his eyes tremendously at the sound of these big words which he no more understood than Rad himself did. Tom hastened to relieve the giant’s feelings to a degree.
“How many fish did you boys catch?” he asked.
“All lak’ Mist’ Damon cotched when he went to Florida after tarpon. One!” chuckled Rad. “Mist’ Damon said he was two days cotchin’ dat one; an’ when he seen how big it was he thought he ought t’ve spent a week at it. This Koku actin’ like it was de on’y fish ever caught in dis lake,” he added, with scorn.
“Well, go on, you two, with your fishing,” said Tom. “I’ve a problem to think out and I don’t want to be bothered by either pterodactyls or locofocos. Get along now.”
He plumped himself down on the sand again and fixed his gaze upon the bobbing piece of bamboo and the inflated bladders. Tom had known, without his father’s declaration to that effect, that one of the chief problems he had to solve in the matter of building a better flying boat than anybody else was the problem of constructing his invention so that it could settle in a rough sea without being capsized.
The puzzling thought was with him, day and night. It ran in his head like a tune that sometimes seems to fill one’s mind to the expulsion of everything else. Yet, when the young inventor was left alone again and tried to settle himself to his problem in statics, his thought weaved a pattern something like this:
“A shell of some light metal—aluminum, we’ll say—buoyed on the outside by additional air chambers. Humph, it would look extremely awkward. But, as Mr. Nestor says very often, the look of a thing isn’t what counts. Poor Mr. Nestor! What will those two women do if he does not live?
“How about double walls from stem to stern for air chambers? Humph! Bless my blown-up bladders! as Mr. Damon might say,” and he chuckled. “Mr. Damon catching a tarpon so big that he thought he should have spent a week landing it. Humph!