The Golden Eagle was the mascot of the Boys’ Athletic Club, and when it vanished there was a great deal of astonishment, which only subsided when Bob got the eagle back.
Following that, in the volume just preceding this one, called “Bob Dexter and the Beacon Beach Mystery,” the lad added other laurels.
He and his chums, Ned and Harry, had gone camping at Beacon Beach for their summer vacation. Almost as soon as they arrived they were enveloped in a mystery which did not end until Bob had found out why the beacon in the lighthouse went out so often, and until he had learned what the “yellow boys” were in the wreck of the Sea Hawk.
“And now I seem to be up against something else,” murmured Bob, as he approached the prostrate man in the grass, and caught sight of the brass-bound box lying near his motionless hand. “Just got back from the Beacon Beach trouble and I run into this. Well, the more the better for me—though I hope this poor old chap isn’t dead!”
He wasn’t, as Bob soon discovered. The man was breathing, and when the lad had dashed into his face some water from a nearby spring, and had poured between the stranger’s lips some from a cup Bob carried in his car for use in filling his storage battery, the man opened his eyes, looked at the youth and cried:
“Did he get it?”
“Did who get what?” Bob wanted to know.
The man’s eyes wildly roved the ground about him, and, lighting on the box he breathed a sigh of relief. He reached out a hand, drew the little chest to him and then, slipping it under his legs as he sat up on the ground he put both hands to the back of his head.
“Um!” he murmured, with a wince of pain. “Quite a lump there. Big as a hen’s egg, I guess. Would you mind taking a look, young feller, and seeing how badly I’m cut? Though I guess I’m not cut at all,” he went on, as he looked at his fingers and saw no sign of blood.
“No, you aren’t cut,” said Bob, taking a look as requested. “But what happened to you? Did you fall?”