CHAPTER XI.
BY THE ROADSIDE.
The boys ran forward across the few yards of meadow that intervened between the Wondership and the roadway. The autoists did not, apparently, notice them. They had stopped the car and were looking back.
"Come on and let's get out of this quick," one of them, a hawk-faced youth, with a long motoring duster on, was shouting to the driver.
"Yes, let's beat it while the going's good, Bill," came from his companion as he addressed the driver of the car.
"I guess we'd better," said the man addressed as Bill.
Before the boys could intervene the car was on its way again, at top speed, leaving the unconscious form of its victim at the roadside.
"Of all the cold-blooded scoundrels!" gasped Jack, horrified at such callousness.
"Never mind them now," advised Tom. "Let's see if this poor fellow is badly hurt. He may even be——"
He did not finish the sentence, but Jack knew what he meant. Hastily the boys scrambled down the low bank that separated the field from the road. They ran quickly to the man's side. To their great relief, for they had feared that he might have been killed, the man was breathing. But his breath came pantingly from his parted lips and there was a bad cut on his forehead.
"Get some water from the creek yonder," said Jack, and Tom hastened up the road to where, beneath the small wooden bridge, there flowed a rivulet of water.
He was soon back, with his handkerchief well soaked, and with an old can, that he had been lucky enough to find, filled with water. They bathed the man's wound and then bound it up as best they could. But he still lay senseless.
"Now what's to be done?" asked Tom.
"We ought to get him over to the Wondership and rush him to the hospital at Nestorville," said Jack.
"Yes, that would be the thing to do. But he's too heavy for us to carry," objected Tom.
"Why not fly over here alongside him. I guess we could lift him in; that patch ought to hold by this time," suggested Jack.
"That's a good idea. What a pack of cowardly sneaks those chaps in that car were."
"I wish we could have stopped them. It would give me real pleasure to see a gang like that get its just deserts. They might have killed this poor fellow."
The unconscious man was powerfully built, with face tanned brown above a yellow beard, from exposure to sun and wind. As Jack had said, he did not look like a tramp. Suddenly the boy noticed lying near him an object which had evidently fallen from the man's pocket when he was struck and flung through the air by the auto.
It was a small cylinder, apparently made of lead, and about three inches long. Jack picked it up, and for the time being did not attempt to examine it but thrust it into his pocket for safe keeping. Little did either of the boys think how much that little cylinder was to mean to them, and how it was to influence some of the most important adventures of their lives.
Making the man as comfortable as they could, by rolling up their coats and placing them under his head, the boys hurried back to the Wondership. When they arrived there they saw that a feature of the radio 'phone, which has not yet been mentioned, was working in urgent appeal. This was a tiny red electric light attached to the top of the case containing the sensitive parts of the apparatus.
By an ingenious device, worked as a call signal from the transmitting station, the electric waves converted a lighting circuit for this purpose.
It was winking and twinkling, and Jack knew that his father was trying to call them.
He sent out some flashes by starting the dynamo going and pressing a key devised for the purpose. This, he knew, would cause a similar light attached to his father's apparatus to flash a reply. This done he waited a second and then adjusted the receivers to his ears.
"What's the matter?" came his father's voice.
Jack gave him a rapid account of the accident, not stopping just then to say anything about the incident of the farmer and his barn.
"What are you going to do about it?" asked his father.
"He appears to be seriously hurt," said Jack. "I was thinking of rushing him to the hospital at Nestorville."
"That seems to be the best plan," said his father. "By the way, did those autoists get clear away?"
"I'm afraid so. They never even waited a second to see if the man was badly injured. They——"
Jack suddenly stopped short. An inspiration had come to him. The accident had happened on a road that, as he knew, led straight through Nestorville. He had thought of a plan to bring the autoists to book for their callousness and negligence.
"Dad—oh, dad!" he called.
"Yes, what is it?" came back Mr. Chadwick's voice.
"Those fellows will pass through Nestorville. I had a flash of the number of the car. It was 4206 Mass. It's a red car and a powerful one, with three men in it."
"What do you want to do?" asked Mr. Chadwick.
"Can't you 'phone to the Nestorville police, telling them what has happened and have those fellows stopped. I'm not vindictive, but they ought to be brought to book for running down a man and then speeding off and leaving him like that."
"I agree with you," replied Mr. Chadwick. "I'll do so at once. Good-by."
"Good-by," said Jack and "rang off."
"That was a great idea of yours, Jack, old boy," approved Tom. "I hope they land those fellows."
"Of course it was an accident," said Jack, "but that fellow who was driving was too busy talking to watch the road, and then going off like that—they deserve all they get."
Examination of the patch showed that it would hold fast and the bag was refilled. As soon as it was sufficiently inflated, the Wondership sailed over to the road and was brought down alongside the still unconscious man.
"Looks as if he's badly hurt," said Tom with some anxiety.
"It does. His skull may be fractured," agreed Jack. "If he is seriously injured those fellows may get into trouble."
It required all the boys' strength to raise the man and get him into the Wondership. Here they laid him out on the floor of the rear section. They had just done this when the red light signaled Jack again. It was Mr. Chadwick. He had notified the Nestorville police force, consisting of a chief and two men, and they were on the lookout for the offending auto.
"Good," said Jack. "Say, dad, the radio telephone has shown its usefulness on the first day out, hasn't it?"
They were soon in the air once more. The run to Nestorville was made quickly. On the outskirts of the town they came to earth and deflated the balloon bag, since the hospital stood in a group of trees and it would have been impossible to make a landing there. The Wondership was converted into an auto and sent speeding toward the main street of the village.
Suddenly they heard a whir of wheels behind them and an impatient tooting of a horn. They looked back and uttered a simultaneous cry of astonishment.
The red auto that had run down the yellow-bearded man was behind them. Its occupants were shouting and sounding their horn impatiently for the right of way.