The Air Ship Boys : Or, the Quest of the Aztec Treasure

by H. L. Sayler

"Water," shouted the eager Jellup, "Jist plain water." And as Ned sprang back the gold-fevered marshal sprang forward and plunged his hand into the liquid.

He did not immediately know that his hand was in the depth of a liquid whose temperature was 423 degrees below zero. But the thin film of gas that instantly formed and protected his naked flesh dissipated in a moment and then one benumbing, paralyzing shock swept over Jack Jellup's body.

With a cry wrung from him by pain such as few mortals have ever experienced and survived, the stricken man fell unconscious to the floor—his arm frozen as solid as crystallized steel.

CHAPTER XVI

READY TO "LET GO ALL"

In the confusion that followed the sudden extinction of the candle, while Ned was freeing Alan and Jack Jellup was uttering heartrending groans, the marshal's confederate lost his nerve and made his escape. When a lantern had been procured, immediate attention was given to the stricken man.

Ned hastened to secure a bucket of water. Wrapping the corner of a blanket about the handle of a tin dipper he ladled out a spoonful of the liquid hydrogen and, although the numbing chill ran through his fingers and up his arm, he managed to pour the hydrogen into the contents of the bucket.

The pail of lukewarm water became almost instantly a cake of solid ice. As Ned dropped the tin dipper to the hard adobe floor it flew into a hundred pieces. The inconceivable cold had crystallized the metal until the slightest shock was sufficient to break it into pieces.

At the sound of the crashing tin Ned instantly thought of the belt of gold yet in the hydrogen jar. But a human being was in pain, and he gave his first attention to the suffering marshal. He had made the ice to use in drawing the frost out of Jellup's frozen arm. In a few moments he had mashed a portion of the ice into small bits, and using a blanket to make a pack, he soon had Jellup's rigid arm encased in the fine ice. This he applied for the same reason that snow and ice water are applied to frozen ears and noses. But his treatment was of no avail.