“What’s up?” inquired Tom, glancing up from his engines.

“By the ghost of Guzzlewits!” gasped Dick.  “Don’t say it won’t work, Jack!”

The professor, ordinarily cool and very calculating, was strangely stirred.  He watched the young inventor’s face.  Did it mean failure?

“I don’t know,” said Jack at last with forced calmness.  “I will try again.”

Once more Jack, oppressed by a vague fear, sent out the words: 

“Hullo, High Towers!”

The reply came with startling swiftness, relieving the party from the mental strain.  In one voice—­the professor included—­they yelled,

“Hurrah!”

“Congratulations!” came Mr. Chadwick’s voice in return.

“Why the delay?” asked Jack, smiling with

“A small lever snapped.  It required a few minutes to repair it.  How far from New York are you now?”

“About forty miles.”

“Good!  Try to land here before sunset.”

“Why?” asked Jack.

“Nestorville has a little surprise for you!” replied Mr. Chadwick, and Jack heard him chuckle.

“Good for Mr. Chadwick!” cried Dick in glee, for Jack had so arranged the instrument that all of them in the Wondership could hear Mr. Chadwick’s voice.

Then followed a long conversation between father and son.  Mr. Chadwick had almost completely recovered his health, and was again working over new experiments.  Dick insisted that he be permitted to tell the story of their adventures on the island of the Coloradite Treasure.

“You won’t tell it right,” he declared to Jack, and insisted so strenuously that the boy inventor had to let him speak to Mr. Chadwick.

Dick set his choicest language agoing, and his vivid description of Jack’s part in every incident was embellished by the most flowery adjectives in his vocabulary.  Jack had to listen, and grin.

By the time his long story was done, Nestorville was sighted.  As soon as the people saw the Wondership, pandemonium broke loose.  Not only Nestorville, but officials and crowds from the neighboring towns had poured in, and the reception the boys and the professor received lingered with them for many, many years.

Later, as time went on, Mr. Chadwick’s fortune was completely rehabilitated.  Professor Jenks no longer was so eager to search for rocks, and while doing so get into all sorts of difficulties.  He lived more at home, becoming at last, as his spinster sister declared, “a man with the proper spirit to make an ideal husband.”  Of course, the professor had received a very substantial sum of money from the boys.

Jack and Tom soon found themselves wealthy, and often in fancy trace the days back to that afternoon when they found the sturdy miner lying on the roadside, having been knocked unconscious by Masterson’s careless driving of his automobile.

Zeb, continued to take charge of the work on Rattlesnake Island, to which the boys never returned.  For a long time the supply from the black barren appeared to be inexhaustible.  Suddenly, however, it ceased, and no more was dug.  But what had been mined had been more than sufficient to make all prosperous.