CHAPTER I
TOM HOPES FOR A PRIZE
"Father," exclaimed Tom Swift, looking up from a paper he was
reading, "I think I can win that prize!"
"What prize is that?" inquired the aged inventor, gazing away from a
drawing of a complicated machine, and pausing in his task of making
some intricate calculations. "You don\'t mean to say, Tom, that you\'re going
to have a try for a government prize for a submarine, after all."
"No," not a submarine prize, dad," and the youth laughed. "Though
our Advance would take the prize away from almost any other under-water
boat, I imagine. No, it\'s another prize I\'m thinking about."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I see by this paper that the Touring Club of America has offered
three thousand dollars for the speediest electric car. The tests are to come
off this fall, on a new and specially built track on Long Island, and it\'s to
be an endurance contest for twenty-four hours, or a race for distance, they
haven\'t yet decided. But I\'m going to have a try for it, dad, and, besides
winning the prize, I think I\'ll take Andy Foger down a peg.