“There’s that brook we crossed, where I stopped to get a drink,” suggested Arthur. “I could run all the way and back, filling my hat full.”
After a slight hesitation, Hugh shook his head in the negative.
“It would take too long, Arthur,” he said. “The sooner I get this arm bandaged up and a splint made to keep it in place, the better; because I’ve seen signs that tell me the gentleman is going to come out of his faint pretty soon. Take hold here, Billy, and do what I tell you. We can pull pretty tight on the tape and it will hold the fractured bones about the way I fixed them.”
All the while he was talking, Hugh had been winding the broad linen tape around the injured arm as neatly as any surgeon would do, and possibly as well, for his whole heart was in his work. And the more the bandage covered the arm, the better it looked in the eyes of the three chums who were watching his labor with considerable pride and approval.
Had the Scout Master been present, he must have smiled with satisfaction to see how his constant endeavors to teach these lads the necessity of being prepared for an emergency were thus bearing ripe fruit, and of excellent quality into the bargain. But then, perhaps he would yet be given the chance to examine the work of Hugh’s hands and to hear the story of the rescue from the boys’ lips.
When the patrol leader had said that the aeronaut was recovering his senses, he had told the exact condition of affairs. They could detect a fluttering of his eyelids now and then; and presently his lips moved whimsically, as though the muscles were first of all beginning to work.
“He opened his eyes then, sure he did, Hugh!” whispered Bud suddenly, just when the other was securing the end of the tape with several stout safety pins that were also discovered deep in one of his pockets.
“That’s good news!” replied Hugh; but he did not take his attention from his work for a single second; he wished to have the job completed before leaving it.
He had fastened the last safety pin, and was patting the arm softly as if congratulating himself on having done at least a decent job, when, on turning toward the aeronaut’s face, he saw that the other’s eyes were now wide open. The man was staring at the boys gathered around him, evidently still half dazed and unable to grasp what it all meant.
“You had an accident in your balloon, sir, and were caught in the top of this tree,” Hugh told him, thinking that the best way to start his brain to working in its proper fashion.