There was another thought that came to Tom as he told the surprised Hartman what was about to be done and mentioned the raft with the shipwrecked ones on it. This was the problem of caring for the two castaways when they were taken aboard the Air Monarch.
“There’s hardly room for them,” reasoned Tom. “Their added weight will hold me back, even if I’m able to make up any of this lost time. And we haven’t any too much food. Didn’t have a chance to lay in any at the camps of the pirates and head-hunters,” he grimly reflected.
But he did not hesitate, and a little later two very thankful, but much wondering, men were being taken aboard the airship. They were thankful for their rescue but surprised at the manner of it.
“We thought some steamer might pick us up,” said one, “but we never counted on something coming out of the sky to do it.”
“Sam thought I was out of my head when I told him an airship was coming,” remarked the other.
Tom had sent his craft slowly over the water on her pontoons as close as he dared to go to the raft, and the men had leaped into the sea, swimming the intervening distance, since it would take but a slight bump from the jagged edges of the raft to puncture the frail body of the Air Monarch.
Once on board, and again riding through the air, Tom listened to the stories of the castaways. They were part of the crew of a small lumber schooner that had broken up in a terrible storm. For more than a week the men had been drifting about on the raft which had been made from some of the deck load of lumber. Five of their companions had been washed off, and one, in delirium, had leaped into the sea and was eaten by sharks. The two who were left had only a little food and water remaining when they were saved.
“I’m sorry that I can’t take you men all the way back to San Francisco with me,” Tom said, when the two had been made comfortable in temporary bunks and given some extra garments in place of their wet and storm-torn ones. “But I’m trying to win a race. How would it do if I landed you on one of the Hawaiian Islands? I’ve got to stop there for oil and gas.”
“That would suit us fine, Captain,” said Sam Stout, while his companion, Frank Madler, said:
“We can easily get another ship there.”