Hassayamp, who like many another man with slight experience of the harmless but frightful-looking vinegaroons believed them to be deadly creatures, was pale with emotion. And with more than emotion, too.
“If you got a drink, Puffesser,” he implored, “for gosh sake give it here! I swallered my plug.”
Tompkins produced a small pocket flask and began to unscrew it. Hassayamp became yet more pale and agitated.
“Oh, gosh!” he groaned. “I’ll never eat no more tobacker—”
He reached out and took the flask. He sniffed it, and into his melancholic eyes came a glow of warmth and happiness. Tompkins beamed upon him, as he lifted the flask.
“I forgot to mention, Mr. Foster, that you must use your mustache as a strainer, because in that whisky I am preserving a very fine specimen of rock scorpion which I recently discovered, and I should be very sorry to have it lost—”
Hassayamp jerked the flask from his lips. He looked at the Professor with slowly distending eyes, then thrust the flask at him; and, with one agonized groan, retired among the near-by boulders.
Tompkins turned and rejoined Miss Gilman.
“Hassayamp will rejoin you shortly,” he said. “He unfortunately swallowed his chew of tobacco—an accident which will unnerve the strongest man, I assure you—” The girl looked at him with strained and anxious eyes.
“But this—this paper! Do you mean to tell me that this man Alec Ramsay was your brother?”