“Well, Gerald, let’s get down to business,” said Arthur briskly.
“Yes,” remarked Jack with a smile, “you’ve got a big baby on your hands; and if we don’t find our way back to camp it won’t prove the jolliest night of my life.”
“You can give us help.”
“How?”
“Hold us to a straight course.”
“That is, you wish me to boss the job; I’ll try to do my duty.”
This is what the two Boy Scouts now did, as deftly and surely as if they had rehearsed the act, though it was the first time they had undertaken such a duty:
Gerald and Arthur took off their coats, turned the sleeves inside out and placed them on the ground with their lower sides touching each other. Gerald first compared the staff he had been carrying with Jack’s which lay near, and finding the latter the stronger passed it through the sleeves on one side and flung away his own staff, while Arthur shoved his through the sleeves of his own coat. The two garments were then buttoned with the button side down and the stretcher was ready.
Jack, who was striving to repress all signs of the anguish he suffered, was then deposited gently on the support, one of his friends between and at either end of the two handles. As they stepped off, they adopted a precaution which is worth remembering, should you ever be called upon to act the good Samaritan in similar circumstances. Gerald first reached out with his right foot, observing which Arthur at the same moment advanced his left. They were careful thus to keep out of step, thereby saving the patient from the jouncing that otherwise would have been added to his distress.
The carriers could not know whether Jack was suffering much or little or not at all, for he was by far the most cheerful of the three. They managed to roll a part of the garments so as to stuff them under his head and thereby partly raise it. This gave him a view of the woods directly in front, of which knowledge he made good use.