There was no need to ask questions. The boy had got a snake bite. The question was,—had a poisonous reptile bitten him?
Lathrop, what with terror and pain from the fever that was coursing through his veins like molten lead, was too terror-stricken to answer Frank’s questions intelligibly. He finally described, however, a snake which they did not doubt was a rattler,—a diamond back,—one of the most deadly pests of the Everglades.
“The medicine chest quick, Harry,” ordered Frank.
The younger boy darted to the canoes and soon returned with the outfit labelled “For Snake Bites.” With quick dexterity Frank had rolled up Lathrop’s sleeve while Harry was getting the remedies, and with a short stick had twisted a handkerchief above the bite so tightly that it was almost buried in the skin. This was to prevent the poison spreading up the arm.
Then, while Lathrop winced with the pain but endured it bravely, Frank slashed two deep cuts in his forearm which bled freely. From the snake-bite outfit Frank rapidly selected some dark-red tablets of permanganate of potassium and rapidly dissolved them in water. By this time Lathrop was in agony. His heart felt as if it was being gripped in a red-hot vise and he had great difficulty in breathing. A strange drowsiness crept over him. Nothing seemed to matter if he could only sleep and forget the pain.
“Leave me alone,” he panted to Frank. “I guess I’d rather die.”
The young leader recognized the seriousness of these symptoms and worked with feverish haste. He fitted a needle onto a hypodermic syringe and seizing a fold of the stricken boy’s skin between his thumb and forefinger he ran the needle almost up to its end in Lathrop’s arm—after having filled the squirt with the permanganate solution. Then, wrapped in blankets, the boy was laid down, while Frank and Harry watched anxiously at his side. After an hour they breathed more freely as Lathrop opened a pair of languid eyes and announced that the pain about his heart had moderated. The next morning he was still so weak, however, that to move him was manifestly impossible.
The boys were in a quandary. They could not leave him and yet time was precious. They must press on. An unexpected solution to the problem was found when Frank and Harry, after spending half a day exploring the little key, announced that they had found a deserted plantation house on the northerly end of it, and that better than that even, there was a quite considerable clearing about the abandoned house that would make an excellent “take off” for the Golden Eagle II. It was decided that night to go to work at once to put the aeroplane together right there and abandon the canoe expedition.
The house that Frank and Harry had found had evidently been long deserted. It was built of clay daubed over plaited branches of the mastic tree and roofed with palmetto leaves. Its door, a queer contrivance of twisted branches and palmetto leaves hung from broken hinges formed by loops of pliable twigs, bent round large crooked sticks set into the frame. All about it stretched a clearing in which apparently the former proprietor had carried on some sort of farming operations. But its condition showed that like the house it had been unused for many years.
“Who do you suppose could have built it?” asked Harry as the boys gazed about them at the dismal scene of desolation and abandonment.