Page:Tom Swift and His Air Glider.djvu/82

72 "taking off" from the mound, as he could not get a running start without a motor. The wind, however, he hoped, would raise him and the strange craft.

In order to get it over the ground without having it capsize, or elevate before they were ready for it, drag ropes, attached to bags of sand were used, and once these were attached the four found that they could not wheel the air glider along on its bicycle wheels.

"We'll have to get Eradicate and his mule, I guess," said Tom, after a vain endeavor to make progress against the wind. "When it's up in the air it will be all right, but until then I'll need help to move it. Ned, call Rad, will you?"

The colored man, with Boomerang, his faithful mule, was soon on hand. The animal was hitched to the glider, and pulled it toward the hill.

"Now to see what happens," remarked Tom. as he wheeled his latest invention around where the wind would take it as soon as the restraining ropes were cast off, for it was now held in place by several heavy cables fastened to stakes driven in the ground.

Tom gave a last careful look to the weights, planes and rudders. He glanced at a small anemometer or wind gage, on the craft, and noted that it registered sixty miles an hour.