The barn was on an untilled farm, the house having
been destroyed some years before, and it was not near any other
structures, so that, even in a high wind, no damage would result.

Tom had filled the barn with inflammable material, and was going to
spare no effort to have the test as exhaustive as possible.

The time came for the preliminary trial, and there were a few anxious
moments after the oil-soaked boards and boxes in the pit were set
ablaze.

"Let her go!" cried Tom to his man on the elevated platform, and down
fell the container of chemicals. It had no sooner struck and burst,
letting loose a mass of flame-choking vapor, than the fire died out.

"You've struck it, Tom! You've struck it!" cried Ned.

"It begins to look so," agreed the young inventor. "But I'll not call
myself out of the woods until this afternoon. Though we can consider it
a success so far."

Quite a throng was on hand when the old barn was set ablaze. Tom and
Ned and Mr. Damon were there with the airship which had been especially
fitted to carry the bombs filled with the extinguisher.

In order to insure a quick, hot blaze the barn was fired on all four
sides at once by Tom's men. When it was seen to be a veritable raging
furnace of fire, Tom and his two friends took their places in the
airship and rapidly mounted upward.

Necessarily they had to circle off away from the blaze to get to the
necessary height, but Tom soon brought the airship around again and
headed for the black pall of smoke which marked the place of the
blazing barn.

"We'll all three send down bombs at the same time," Tom told his
friends, as they darted forward. "When I give the word press the
levers, and the chemical containers will drop. Then we'll hope for the
best."

Higher mounted the flames, and more fiercely raged the fire. The heat
of it penetrated even aloft, where Tom and his friends were scudding
along in the airship.

"Now!" cried Tom, as his craft hovered for an instant in a favorable
position for dropping the bombs. The young inventor, Mr. Damon, and Ned
Newton pressed the levers. Looking over the sides of the craft, they
saw three dark objects dropping into the midst of the burning barn.

CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE CLOUDS

Almost as though some giant hand had dropped an immense cloak over the
fire in the barn, so did the blaze die down instantly after Tom Swift's
extinguishing liquid had been dropped into the seething caldron of
fla