Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight

Tom Swift and His Great
Searchlight

Project Gutenberg's Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight, by Victor
Appleton Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to
check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg file.
We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your own disk,
thereby keeping an electronic path open for future readers.
Please do not remove this.
This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to view
the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission. The
words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need to understand what they may and may not do with the etext. To
encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end,
rather than having it all here at the beginning.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and further
information, is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)

organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.

Title: Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight
Author: Victor Appleton
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4635] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 20,
2002]
Project Gutenberg's Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight, by Victor
Appleton ***********This file should be named 15tom10.txt or
15tom10.zip***********
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, 15tom11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 15tom10a.txt
This etext was produced by Greg Weeks, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a
copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep etexts in
compliance with any particular paper edition.
The "legal small print" and other information about this book may now
be found at the end of this file. Please read this important information,
as it gives you specific rights and tells you about restrictions in how the
file may be used.

Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight
or
On the Border for Uncle Sam
by Victor Appleton
AUTHOR OF "TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR-CYCLE," "TOM
SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT," "TOM SWIFT AND HIS
WIRELESS MESSAGE," "TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED

CONTENTS
I A SCRAP OF PAPER II A SPY IN TOWN III QUEER REPAIRS IV
SEARCHING FOR SMUGGLERS V THE RAID VI THE APPEAL
TO TOM VII A SEARCHLIGHT IS NEEDED VIII TOM'S NEWEST
INVENTION IX "BEWARE OF THE COMET!" X OFF FOR THE
BORDER XI ANDY'S NEW AIRSHIP XII WARNED AWAY XIII
KOKU SAVES THE LIGHT XIV A FALSE CLEW XV THE
RESCUE ON THE LAKE XVI KOKU'S PRISONER XVII WHAT
THE INDIAN SAW XVIII THE PURSUIT XIX IN DIRE PERIL XX
SUSPICIOUS ACTIONS XXI MR. PERIOD ARRIVES XXII
HOVERING O'ER THE BORDER XXIII NED IS MISSING XXIV
THE NIGHT RACE XXV THE CAPTURE--CONCLUSION

TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
CHAPTER I
A SCRAP OF PAPER

"Tom, did you know Andy Foger was back in town?"
"Great Scott, no, I didn't Ned! Not to stay, I hope."
"I guess not. The old Foger homestead is closed up, though I did see a
man working around it to-day as I came past. But he was a carpenter,
making some repairs I think. No, I don't believe Andy is here to stay."
"But if some one is fixing up the house, it looks as if the family would
come back," remarked Tom, as he thought of the lad who had so long
been his enemy, and who had done him many mean turns before
leaving Shopton, where our hero lived.
"I don't think so," was the opinion of Ned Newton, who was Tom
Swift's particular chum. "You know when Mr. Foger lost all his money,
the house was supposed to be sold. But I heard later that there was
some flaw in the title, and the sale fell through. It is because he couldn't
sell the place that Mr. Foger couldn't get money to pay some of his
debts. He has some claim on the house, I believe, but I don't believe
he'd come back to live in it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's too expensive a place for a poor man to keep up, and Mr.
Foger is now poor."
"Yes, he didn't get any of the gold, as we did when we went to the
underground