Page:Tom Swift and His Air Glider.djvu/30

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
20
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER

with a sad smile. "Our party was opposed to violence, and we depended on education to aid our cause. Then, too, we did all we could in a quiet way to help the poor. My brother and I invented several life-saving and labor-saving machines and in this way we incurred the enmity of the rich contractors and government officials, who made more money the more people they could have working for them, for they made the people buy their food and supplies from them.

"But my brother, and I persisted, with the result that we were both arrested, and, with a number of others were sent to Siberia.

"Of the horrors we endured there I will say nothing. However, you have probably read much. In the country near which we were quartered there were many mines, some of salt and some of sulphur. Oh, the horros of those mines! Many a poor exile has been lost in the windings of a salt mine, there to die miserably. And in the sulphur mines many die also, not from being lost so much as being overcome by stifling gases. It is terrible! And sometimes they are purposely abandoned by their guides, for the government wants to get rid of certain exiles.

"But you are interested in platinum. One day my brother and I who had been sent to work in the salt mines, mistook a turning and wandered