Page:Tom Swift and His Air Glider.djvu/75

Rh you. I had to go slowly so as not to pass you in the darkness."

They were speeding off now, and Ned, turning the beams of the great searchlight below them, picked up the three guards who were gazing helplessly aloft after their fast disappearing prisoner.

"You're having your first ride in an airship, Mr. Petrofsky," remarked Tom, when they had gone on for some little distance. "How do you like it?"

"I'm so excited I hardly know, but it's quite a sensation. But how in the world did you ever find me to rescue me?"

Then they told the story of their search, and the unexpected clew from Russia. In turn the exile told how he had been attacked at the breakfast table one morning by the three spies—the very men who had been shadowing him—and taken away secretly, being drugged to prevent his calling for help. He had been kept a close prisoner in the lonely hut, and each day he had expected to be taken back to serve out his sentence in Siberia.

"Another day would have been too late," he told Tom, when he had thanked the young inventor over and over again, "for the papers would have arrived, and the last obstacle to