Tom was up with a yell, wrenched himself from Koku’s grasp, and started down the shop with the speed of a deer.
“Who did that? Stop your engine! Throw off the power!” he yelled.
But already the man in charge of the power governing the crane had come to his senses. He had thrown over the lever and shut off the power. The swinging loops of heavy steel links were now at the far end of the shop.
The accident was, for a time, seemingly inexplicable. The crane traveling toward the shop door had been seemingly stuck. The controller had been thrown twice to start it. And when the fouled crane had started, it had rushed backward instead of forward. Only Koku’s sharp gaze had observed it, and his quick action had saved Tom Swift from disaster.
An ambulance was sent for to take the two more seriously injured men to the hospital. Meanwhile the general opinion in the erecting shop was that a deliberate attempt had been made against the young inventor’s life.
Koku glared at everybody who came anywhere near his master. He marched up and down within a stride or two of Tom, and flexed his big muscles and muttered threats in his own tongue. The half civilized creature, who was usually the mildest person imaginable, had now become a figure to strike terror to the bravest.
Before anything further was done to the keel of the flying boat Tom made an exhaustive examination of the traveling crane, the cables attached to it, and the steel rail from which its truck hung. He trusted the engineman, who was an old employee. And he could not think of any man or boy about the erecting shop that wished the company—or himself—ill.
“It’s a jinx, boss,” declared one of the older men. “Bad luck! And I have a feeling in my bones that it’s only the beginning.”
“Come, Carney!” commanded Tom Swift. “You take something to get rid of any such feeling. Don’t talk that way and let the other men hear you. Of course there is a perfectly reasonable explanation of the accident.”
“That doesn’t stop it from being bad luck just the same,” muttered the man.