Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders | Page 2

idea for. I've been working too hard, that's a
fact. I need a vacation, and maybe a good baseball game----"
He stopped and looked at the magazine he had so hastily slapped down.
Something he had read in it seemed to fascinate him.

"I wonder if it can possibly be true," he went on. "It sounds like the
wildest dream of a professional sleep-walker; and yet, when I stop to
think, it isn't much worse than some of the things we've gone through
with, Ned."
"Say, for the love of rice-pudding! will you get down to brass tacks and
strike a trial balance? What are you talking of, anyhow? Is it a joke?"
"A joke?"
"Yes. What you just read in that magazine which seems to cause you so
much excitement."
"Well, it may be a joke; and yet the professor seems very much in
earnest about it," replied Tom. "It certainly is one wonderful story!"
"So you said before. Come on--the `fillium' is busted. Splice it, or else
put in a new reel and on with the show. I'd like to know what's doing.
What professor are you talking of?"
"Professor Swyington Bumper."
"Swyington Bumper?" and Ned's voice showed that his memory was a
bit hazy.
"Yes. You ought to remember him. He was on the steamer when I went
down to Peru to help the Titus Brothers dig the big tunnel. That plotter
Waddington, or some of his tools, dropped a bomb where it might have
done us some injury, but Professor Bumper, who was a fellow
passenger, on his way to South America to look for the lost city of
Pelone, calmly picked up the bomb, plucked out the fuse, and saved us
from bad injuries, if not death. And he was as cool about it as an
ice-cream cone. Surely you remember!"
"Swyington Bumper! Oh, yes, now I remember him," said Ned Newton.
"But what has he got to do with a wonderful story? Has he written more
about the lost city of Pelone? If he has I don't see anything so very
wonderful in that."

"There isn't," agreed Tom. "But this isn't that," and Tom picked up the
magazine and leafed it to find the article he had been reading.
"Let's have a look at it," suggested Ned. "You act as though you might
be vitally interested in it. Maybe you're thinking of joining forces with
the professor again, as you did when you dug the big tunnel."
"Oh, no. I haven't any such idea," Tom said. "I've got enough work laid
out now to keep me in Shopton for the next year. I have no notion of
going anywhere with Professor Bumper. Yet I can't help being
impressed by this," and, having found the article in the magazine to
which he referred, he handed it to his chum.
"Why, it's by Bumper himself!" exclaimed Ned.
"Yes. Though there's nothing remarkable in that, seeing that he is
constantly contributing articles to various publications or writing books.
It's the story itself that's so wonderful. To save you the trouble of
wading through a lot of scientific detail, which I know you don't care
about, I'll tell you that the story is about a queer idol of solid gold,
weighing many pounds, and, in consequence, of great value."
"Of solid gold you say?" asked Ned eagerly.
"That's it. Got on your banking air already," Tom laughed. "To sum it
up for you--notice I use the word `sum,' which is very appropriate for a
bank--the professor has got on the track of another lost or hidden city.
This one, the name of which doesn't appear, is in the Copan valley of
Honduras, and----"
"Copan," interrupted Ned. "It sounds like the name of some new floor
varnish."
"Well, it isn't, though it might be," laughed Tom. "Copan is a city, in
the Department of Copan, near the boundary between Honduras and
Guatemala. A fact I learned from the article and not because I
remembered my geography."

"I was going to say," remarked Ned with a smile, "that you were
coming it rather strong on the school-book stuff."
"Oh, it's all plainly written down there," and Tom waved toward the
magazine at which Ned was looking. "As you'll see, if you take the
trouble to go through it, as I did, Copan is, or maybe was, for all I know,
one of the most important centers of the Mayan civilization."
"What's Mayan?" asked Ned. "You see I'm going to imbibe my
information by the deductive rather than the excavative process," he
added with a laugh.
"I see," laughed Tom. "Well, Mayan refers to the Mayas, an aboriginal
people of Yucatan. The Mayas had a peculiar civilization of their own,
thousands of years ago, and their calendar system was so involved----"
"Never mind about