), and also Garret
Jackson, an expert engineer, who aided the young inventor and his father
in perfecting many machines.

There was also another semi-member of the household, to wit, Eradicate
Sampson, an eccentric colored man, who owned a mule called Boomerang.
Eradicate did odd jobs around the place, and the mule assisted his
owner--that is when the mule felt like it.

In the second volume of the series, entitled "Tom Swift and His
Motor-Boat," there was related the incidents following a pursuit after
a gang of unprincipled men, who sought to get Possession of some of Mr.
Swift's patents, and it was while in this boat that Tom, his father, and
a friend, Ned Newton, rescued from Lake Carlopa a Mr. John Sharp, who
fell from his burning balloon. Mr. Sharp was a skilled aeronaut, and
after his recovery he joined Tom in building a big airship, called the
Red Cloud. Tom's adventures in this craft are set down in detail in the
third volume of the series, called "Tom Swift and His Airship." Not only
did he and Mr. Sharp and Mr. Damon make a great trip, but they captured
some bank robbers, and incidentally cleared themselves from the
imputation of having looted the vault of seventy-five thousand dollars,
which charge was fostered by a certain Mr. Foger, and his son Andy, who
was Tom's enemy.

Not satisfied with having conquered the air, Tom and his father set
to work to gain a victory over the ocean. They built a boat that could
navigate under water, and, in the fourth book of the series, called "Tom
Swift and His Submarine Boat," you will find an account of how they went
under the ocean to secure a sunken treasure, and the fight they had with
their enemies who sought to get it away from them. They went through
many perils, not the least of which was capture by a foreign warship.

In the fifth book, entitled "Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout," there
was told the story of a wonderfully speedy electric automobile the young
inventor constructed, and how he made a great race in it, and saved from
ruin a bank, in which his father and Mr. Damon were interested.

Tom's ability as an inventor had, by this time, become well known. One
day, as related in a volume called "Tom Swift and His Wireless Message,"
he received a letter from a Mr. Hosmer Fenwick, of Philadelphia, asking
his aid in perfecting an airship which the resident of the Quaker
City had built, but which would not work. In his small monoplane, the
Butterfly, Tom an