Both girls had been chloroformed!
CHAPTER IX
THE LADYBUG!
Dot was the first of the two girls to come to consciousness. With a gasp for breath, she pushed the cloth from her face and sat up. For a moment or two everything swam about her; she didn’t know where she was.
She thought at first that she and Linda were on that deserted island in the Atlantic Ocean where they had been stranded early in the summer. But no; the ground was hard and dry—not a bit sandy—and there was no ocean in view. That couldn’t be the explanation. For there was the Ladybug within a few hundred yards!
She glanced at Linda and saw that she was lying motionless beside her on the barren ground, her blanket thrown aside. With a cloth over her face! In sudden panic Dot pulled it off desperately. Oh, suppose Linda were dead!
“Linda! Darling!” she implored piteously, but there was no reply, no movement from the inert figure. With a tremendous effort Dot forced herself to rise and bend over her chum.
“Tell me you aren’t dead, Linda!” she begged, hysterically.
A faint flutter of her companion’s eyelids came as a response.
With a tremendous effort, Dot reached for the thermos bottle and held water to Linda’s lips. At last the color came faintly back to the aviatrix’s face, and she smiled faintly.
“I’m—all right—Dot,” she managed to whisper. “But what happened?”