In that volume it was related how Tom bought a motor-cycle from a Mr. Wakefield Damon, of Waterford.  Mr. Damon was an eccentric individual, who was continually blessing himself, some one else, or something belonging to him.  His motor-cycle tried to climb a tree with him, and that was why he sold it to Tom.  The two thus became acquainted, and their friendship grew from year to year.

After many adventures on his motor-cycle Tom got a motor-boat, and had some exciting times in that.  One of the things he and his father and his chum, Ned Newton, did, was to rescue, from a burning balloon that had fallen into Lake Carlopa, an aeronaut named John Sharp.  Later Tom and Mr. Sharp built an airship called the Red Cloud, and with Mr. Damon and some others had a series of remarkable fights.

In the Red Cloud they got on the track of some bank robbers, and captured them, thus foiling the plans of Andy Foger, a town bully, and one of Tom’s enemies, and putting to confusion the plot of Mr. Foger, Andy’s father.

After many adventures in the air Tom and his friends, in a submarine boat, invented by Mr. Swift, went under the ocean for sunken treasure and secured a large part of it.

It was not long after this that Tom conceived the idea of a powerful electric car, which proved, to be the speediest of the road, and in it he won a great race, and saved from ruin a bank in which his father and Mr. Damon were interested.

The sixth book of the series, entitled “Tom Swift and His Wireless Message,” tells how, in testing a new electric airship, which a friend of Mr. Damon’s had invented, Tom, the inventor and Mr. Damon were lost on an island in the middle of the ocean.  There they found some castaways, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. Nestor, parents of Mary Nestor of Shopton, a girl of whom Tom was quite fond.

Tom Swift, after his arrival home, went on an expedition among a gang of men known as the “Diamond Makers” who were hidden in the Rocky Mountains.  He was accompanied by Mr. Barcoe Jenks, one of the castaways of Earthquake Island.  They found the diamond makers, and had some surprising adventures, barely escaping with their lives.

This did not daunt Tom, however, and he once more started off on an expedition in his airship the Red Cloud to Alaska, amid the caves of ice.  He was searching for a valley of gold, and though he and his friends found it, they came to grief.  The Fogers, father and son, tried to steal the gold from them, and, failing in that, incited the Eskimos against our friends.  There was a battle, but the forces of nature were even more to be dreaded than the terrible savages.

The ice cave, in which the Red Cloud was stored, collapsed, crushing the gallant craft, and burying it out of sight forever under thousand of tons of the frozen bergs.