“Oh, Mark, if that is so, we are lost!”
Lost! It was a horrifying word. Were they really lost in that immense jungle, perhaps miles away from where they had left their companions? The face of each whitened and Frank sank down on a tree root in despair.
“Yes, we must be lost!” he murmured. “And if we are, how will we ever find our way back to camp?”
“We must find our way back—we simply must!” was Mark’s reply. “The river can’t be so very far off.”
“But the canoe is gone. We won’t get that back. It must be miles from here by this time,” insisted Frank.
“Well, if it’s gone we’ll have to tramp back, that’s all, Frank. I know it’s a long way, and not a very inviting way either, but there is nothing else to do.”
The sun was now setting and the blackness of night began to creep swiftly over the immense forest. Still further alarmed, they pushed on until, without warning, Frank fell headlong and lay like a log. Mark raised him up and saw that the hand which had been bitten by the spider was swollen to twice its size and that the swelling was beginning to creep up the arm.
“He is poisoned, that’s all there is to that,” thought Mark. “Perhaps it will kill him.”
The thought of his chum dying there, on his hands, in that lonely place, made him frantic. He tore off the handkerchief Frank had placed on his hand and brushed the soft mud from the bite. He had heard how poison can sometimes be sucked from a wound and now he set to work fearlessly, not thinking of himself, but only praying mentally that the action would restore Frank to consciousness.
The hours of the night to follow were such that Mark, if he lives a hundred years, will never forget. After sucking the bite thoroughly, he plastered it with fresh mud and bound it up again. Then, carrying Frank to the edge of the pool, he lit a camp-fire, to keep off any wild beasts that might be prowling in the vicinity. He bathed his chum’s face and raised him up. At first Frank did not respond to this treatment but at last he opened his eyes and stared around in bewilderment.