“I suppose you’re right as usual, but Bob, I’m scared stiff.”
“You needn’t be. I’m all right and if it wasn’t for these pesky mosquitoes I could go to sleep. Now you hit the hay and get some rest. You’ll likely have some hunt before you find me tomorrow and you’ll need all your strength.”
“But why didn’t you call me on your phone? I’ve been trying to get you ever since it began to get dark but I just discovered a loose connection on my condenser and I guess the thing didn’t work till just now.”
“To tell the truth,” Bob replied, “I never once thought of it. Funny wasn’t it? But now you get to sleep.”
At first Jack protested that it would be impossible for him to get to sleep, but after Bob had again assured him that he would be all right and that the best way in which he could help him right then was to sleep so as to be fresh for his hunt on the morrow, he consented to try and they bade each other good night.
Bob, much cheered by the conversation with his brother, now accepted the situation philosophically.
“Well,” he thought, “I little dreamed while we were working on these phones that they would so soon be the means of saving my life. It’s a mighty lucky thing for me that we made them.”
Hope made the time pass more quickly than it had before Jack called, but, nevertheless it seemed as though several nights had had time to go by before his watch told him that it was three o’clock. He was badly bitten by mosquitoes in spite of his efforts to keep them off, and his leg was beginning to pain him again.
“Too bad I didn’t bring along a flash light,” he thought as he struck his next to the last match to see if the leg was bleeding.
He did not think that it was but was quite sure that it was swelling pretty badly.