The front of the whizzer rose, and then settled down.  Tom quickly shut off the power, and jammed on the brake, an arrangement of spikes that dug into the earth, for the high board fence loomed up before him.

“What’s the matter?” cried Mr. Fenwick, anxiously.

“Couldn’t get up speed enough,” answered the young inventor.  “We must have more momentum to make her rise.”

“Can it be gotten?”

“I think so.  I’ll gear the motor higher.”

It took an hour to do this.  Once more the scale test was applied.  It registered a pull of fifteen hundred pounds now.

“We’ll go up,” said Tom, grimly.

Once more the motors spit out fire, and the propellers whirled so that they looked like mere circles of light.  Once more the whizzer shot over the ground, but this time, as she neared the fence, she rose up like a bird, cleared it like a trick horse, and soared off into the air!

The whizzer was flying!

CHAPTER X

OVER THE OCEAN

“Hurrah!” cried Mr. Fenwick in delight.  “My machine is really flying at last!”

“Yes,” answered Tom, as he adjusted various levers and gears, “she is going.  It’s not as high as I’d like, but it is doing very well, considering the weight of the craft, and the fact that we have not used the gas bag.  I’m going to let that fill now, and we’ll go up.  Don’t you want to steer, Mr. Fenwick?”

“No, you manage it, Tom, until it’s in good running shape.  I don’t want to ‘hoodoo’ it.  I worked as hard as I could, and never got more than two feet off the ground.  Now I’m really sailing.  It’s great!”

He was very enthusiastic, and Tom himself was not a little pleased at his own success, for certainly the airship had looked to be a very dubious proposition at first.

“Bless my gaiters!  But we are doing pretty well,” remarked Mr. Damon, looking down on the field where Mr. Fenwick’s friends and the machinists were gathered, cheering and waving their hands.

“We’ll do better,” declared Tom.

He had already set the gas machine in operation, and was now looking over the electric apparatus, to see that it was working well.  It needed some adjustments, which he made.

All this while the whizzer was moving about in a big circle, for the rudder had been automatically set to so swing the craft.  It was about two hundred feet high, but soon after the gas began to enter the bag it rose until it was nearly five thousand feet high.  This satisfied Tom that the airship could do better than he expected, and he decided to return nearer earth.

In going down, he put the craft through a number of evolutions designed to test her ability to answer the rudders promptly.  The lad saw opportunity for making a number of changes, and suggested them to Mr. Fenwick.

“Are you going any farther?” asked the owner of the whizzer, as he saw that his craft was slowly settling.