The pilot, off guard, stumbled against the table and fell. There came a cry and a cough—and silence. Choked, gasping, with smarting eyes streaming with tears, the chums staggered out.
“In case you might wonder—” Scott’s voice floated to them from the humming electric launch, “I left the hospital the same night I pretended to be injured by the propeller—I knew the Indian was going to try to drive me down, and pretended to be laid up. But I could run fast enough to come back, smoke you out and get the film—it had a picture on it I didn’t want seen—and I flung it out into the swamp and went back to my room—put the things that you found in that mail flyer’s room where you saw them—and came back to stay with the Chief till he sent me off to bed—only, I came here to load the treasure. Now—good-bye. It flies in five minutes!”
“Not much it doesn’t!” muttering, choking, coughing, Don gasped orders. Flares to signal, as soon as Chick and Garry got the pilot out of the house. His job was to start the Dragonfly. He staggered to the wharf-side, dropped into the craft—saw that the ignition wire was cut!
CHAPTER XXXII
A FLYING FINISH
Feverishly Don worked with spare cable to wire around the ignition switch and get his engine going.
From the boathouse staggered Garry and Chick, coughing, their eyes streaming. They dragged, by the shoulders, the unconscious pilot.
“His head must have struck something!” gasped Garry, dabbing at his eyes. Suddenly something snapped into his mind.
“Chick!” he choked and gasped, then turning, stuttered, “my first aid—kit! I left it—on—path—promontory—when—mail ’plane went down!”
Staggering, but bravely eager to help a man who was hurt, the youth took his way off the wharf, along the path, into the grass toward the end of the shore that curved out into the inlet, making the wavering line of the channel on one side.
The roar of an airplane engine came—but it was in the air!