Koku came back on the run, and was soon tying knots in a strong rope. Meanwhile Ned kept the light on the tossing boat, while Tom, through a megaphone had called to the men to stand by to be rescued. The whistle frantically tooted their thanks.
Koku went out on the after deck, and, having made the knotted rope fast, dropped the end overboard. Then began a difficult feature of airship steering. Tom, looking down through the glass, watched the boat in the glare of the light. Now coming forward, now reversing against the rush of the wind; now going up, and now down, the young inventor so directed the course of his airship so that, finally, the rope dragged squarely across the tossing boat.
In a trice the men grabbed it, and made it fast. Then Tom had another difficult task--that of not allowing the rope to become taut, or the drag of the boat, and the uplift of the airship might have snapped it in twain. But he handled his delicate craft of the air as confidently as the captain of a big liner brings her skillfully to the deck against wind and tide.
"Climb up! Climb up!" yelled Tom, through the megaphone, and he saw, not a man, but a woman, ascending the knotted rope, hand over hand, toward the airship that hovered above her head.
Chapter XVI Koku's Prisoner
"Bless my knitting needles!" cried Mr. Damon, as he looked down, and saw, in the glare of the great light, the figure of the woman clinging to the swaying rope. "Help her, someone! Tom! Ned! She'll fall!"
The eccentric man started to rush from the motor room, where he had been helping Ned. But the latter cried:
"Stay where you are, Mr. Damon. No one can reach her now without danger to himself and her. She can climb up, I think."
Past knot after knot the woman passed, mounting steadily upward, with a strength that seemed remarkable.