Relief did not come until dark. The blackness of the night served in some manner to cause the flies to leave, although a small few remained threateningly.
“Oh!” muttered Bob, trying in vain to bend his wrist. “They sure fixed us up plenty good. Our—— My gosh! Joe, look at yourself in a mirror. And you, too, Dr. Rander.”
The three were indeed a sorry-looking sight. Their faces were so swollen that their eyes were hardly visible, and their hands and arms were no better off.
“And how it hurts!” Joe was almost frantic with the stinging pain. “It’s a good thing the sun went down when it did, or there would have been nothing left of us,” he added.
All were too bruised and tired to prepare a meal, but necessity forced them to do so. But not until Dr. Rander produced a large tube of a special salve, which he applied freely to the swollen parts.
“This will relieve the pain,” he told the youths. “In the morning we’ll be a little better, but it won’t be for a week that the sores will disappear completely.”
Dawn found the adventurers scarcely aware that they had been bitten, although the scars were still there to tell the story.
“Let’s forget all about that unpleasant encounter,” suggested Joe optimistically. “Suppose we take everything that happens purely as an adventure.”