Meanwhile the hurricane was increasing in violence. The wind howled as if in rage that any man-made craft should try to fight it. The sea, too, was whipped into salty spray and the waves were rapidly becoming larger and more dangerous. Two or three times water sprayed all the way over the Air Monarch, and when Ned discovered that some was entering the interior of the ship through an open window he hastened to close it.
“All ready, Chief!” called Brinkley, addressing Tom Swift. “Here goes for the super-charger!”
“If she doesn’t rise now she never will!” murmured Tom as he yanked the throttle around to turn on full power with the new fuel, a tank of which had been hastily connected with the carburetor.
If the motors had hummed and purred before, they fairly roared now with this new form of gas, and Tom exulted in his heart.
“It wouldn’t do to use that all the while, though,” he said to himself. “It would rack the engines to pieces. But it’s good to have in an emergency. Now let’s see if we can take off.”
The craft was now skimming the surface of the sea at a greater speed than she had ever before attained on water. Tom pulled the throttle back another notch, advanced his sparking system a trifle, and then pulled the handle that tilted the tail rudder. Until this was done the Air Monarch would sail along on an even keel. But with the back rudder tilted so that a current of air would strike on the lower surface, the effect would be to elevate the nose of the ship and send it up into the air on a long slant.
“I hope she’ll work,” Tom told himself, as he pulled the lever.
There came another burst of wind, and now it began to rain in a torrent, while lightning flashed from the cloud-obscured sky and the deep booming of thunder seemed to shake the craft from stem to stern.
The machine quivered. It seemed to be a struggle between the elements of air and water as to which should claim her, but in the end the air won.
“We’re rising!” cried Ned, who stood behind Tom. But the young inventor had already noted on the altitude gage that the machine was leaving the sea and going up.