“Frank?” said Bob, thickly, at last. “Oh, my head.”
“Thank heaven, you’re alive,” said Frank fervently, and there was a bit of tremolo in his tone. He and the big fellow were very close to each other. “Now just lie quiet, and I’ll explain where you are and what happened. But first tell me are you hurt any place other than your head?”
“No, I think not,” said Bob. “But the old bean’s humming like a top. What happened, anyhow? Where are we? Where are the others?”
“Right here, old thing,” said Jack, on the other side of the prone figure.
Thereupon Bob, too, was put in possession of the facts as to what had occurred. At the end of the recital, he sat up, albeit with an effort, for his head felt, as he described it, “like Fourth of July night—and no safe and sane Fourth, at that.”
“I don’t know if you fellows can ever forgive me,” he said, with a groan. “I got you into this. I saw red, when I discovered it was Higginbotham and that other rascal who had set the plane afire. There they were, in the woods, and I set out to crawl after them. Frank followed me.” 103
“Tried to stop him,” interposed Frank. “But he wouldn’t be stopped. I didn’t dare call to the rest of you for fear of giving the alarm, so I went along. Anyhow, Bob,” he added, loyally, “I felt just the same way you did about it, and you were no worse than I.”
“No,” said Bob. “You weren’t to blame at all. It was all my fault.”
“Forget it,” said Jack. “Let’s consider what to do now? Here we are, five of us, and now that we are on guard we ought to be able to give a pretty good account of ourselves. I, for one, don’t propose to sit around and wait for our captors to dispose of us. How about the rest of you?”
“Say on, Jack,” said Frank. “If Bob’s all right, nothing matters.”