Page:Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight.djvu/174

164 the custom officer. "I thought if we could trail them to the place where they have been delivering the goods, before they shipped them to Shopton we'd be doing well. But I never thought of catching them in mid-air."

"I'm going to try it," declared the young inventor. "I've got a grappling anchor on board," he went on, "attached to a motor and windlass. If I can catch that anchor in any part of their ship I can bring them to a stop, just as a fisherman lands a trout. Only I've got to get close enough to make a cast, and I want to be above them when I do it."

"Don't you think you can catch them, Tom?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Well, I'm pretty sure I can, and yet they seem to have a faster biplane than I gave them credit for. I guess I'll have to increase our speed a little," and he shifted a lever which made the Falcon shoot along at nearly doubled speed. Still the other airship kept ahead, not far, but sufficiently so to prevent the grappling anchor from being tossed at her rail.

"I wonder if they are the smugglers?" questioned Mr. Damon. "It might be possible, Tom, that we're chasing the wrong craft."

"Possible, but not probable," put in Mr. Whitford. "After the clew we got, and what the