Contestants could travel as they liked, in any sort of conveyance, motor car, steamer, train, airship, or submarine. They could change conveyances as often as they pleased. The sole requisite was that they must come back to the starting point, after traveling completely around the earth, and they must prove that they had done it.
“This suits me!” exclaimed Tom, as he read the conditions.
“Then you’ll enter for the hundred thousand dollars?” asked Ned.
“I certainly will, and I hope to win it. Now this race is going to be worth while. If I won the twenty thousand dollars for dad, I’d hardly break even. But if I win the prize—oh, boy!” and Tom patted the big machine into which his hopes were built.
Keyed up to a high pitch by the prospect, Tom hurried his mechanics and helpers to the limit. Not any too much time was left to enter the Illustrated Star’s contest, and within a few days Tom Swift’s entry had been formally sent in and acknowledged.
Each succeeding day’s issue of the paper gave Tom and Ned news of the event, and one day Tom pointed to an item in the general story.
“The Red Arrow people are going to try for the prize,” he said. “They’re going to fight me. That’s why Hussy was sneaking in here, I guess. They wanted to see if they could add anything to the aeroplane they are going to enter.”
“Are they going to try in an aeroplane?” asked Ned.
“So it says here. It doesn’t mention any boat or automobile auxiliary.”
Tom had been obliged to describe the method he proposed to follow in the world race, and of course it was publicly known now that he would try in a combined automobile, motor boat, and aeroplane. Aside from some hydroplanes, which of course can skim along on the surface of the water, as well as soar over land, Tom’s was the only machine of more than a single ability.