“Getting tired, Koku?” asked Tom, pausing on the threshold of his laboratory. “It isn’t much fun for you to be sitting there.”
“Not much tired. Master,” was the reply, “But Koku like do something—smash somebody—fight. No fun sit here nodding do.”
“No, it isn’t much fun doing nothing, I’ll admit,” said Tom. “And if it ever comes to a fight, Koku, you shall have a share in it. But it looks now as though the rascals would leave us alone. It won’t be much longer now, I think, I’m on the verge of success.”
“That good,” Koku answered. He did not, perhaps, understand all Tom had said, but he had been associated with the young inventor long enough to know when Tom spoke of success that it meant pleasure for the “Master.” For this Koku was glad. “Maybe you make new airship go back Koku’s country?” the giant asked.
“No, this isn’t an airship I’m working on now,” Tom said, knowing it would be of no use to explain to the simple mind of the giant what the invention really was. “But would you like to go back to your own land of giants, Koku?”
“Sometimes Koku think maybe he like to go,” was the slow answer. “But Koku like it here, too. Sometimes get hungry for fash,” and he named a peculiar fruit that the giants of his land were especially fond of. Tom and Ned, on their voyage which had resulted in the capture of Koku, had seen how passionately eager the big men were for this fruit. They would go to almost any length to get it. And Tom had an idea how Koku must long for some now and then in a land where no fash was to be had. It Was a species of melon with a peculiar taste and odor. Neither Tom nor Ned had any liking for fash, but the giants seemed to thrive upon it.
“Some day, Koku,” the young inventor half promised as he stepped into his laboratory to start anew the test, this time under different circumstances, “I may take another airship trip to your country and let you have all the fash you want.”
“By golly, Master, that be good time for me!” cried the giant with a happy laugh.
As Tom walked over to the apparatus by which he hoped to produce such startling results, the telephone bell on the instrument that connected the laboratory with the broadcasting studio rang hard.
“Hello! What’s the matter?” Tom asked, over the wire.