Part 28 (1/2)

The boy stirred uneasily and his eyes opened.

”Oh, is it you, Peggy? I guess I was knocked out for a minute.

It's my shoulder. Ouch! Don't touch it.”

The boy winced as Peggy's soft hand touched the injured member.

”Allow me. I've got a little skill at surgery.”'

It was Professor Wandering William's voice, and Peggy caught herself wondering that he didn't make some reference to his infallible bone set or wonder-working liniment. But he didn't. Instead, he knelt by Roy's side, and with a few deft strokes of his knife had cut away the boy's s.h.i.+rt and bared a shoulder that was rapidly turning a deep blue.

Tenderly as a woman might have, Wandering William felt the wound.

”Hurt?” he asked, as Roy winced, biting his lips to keep from crying out under the agony.

”Hurt?” echoed Peggy indignantly; ”of course it does.”

Professor Wandering William looked up with an odd air of authority in his keen eyes.

”Please fetch me some water from the aeroplane,” he said, and Peggy had no choice but to obey.

Professor Wandering William, picking Roy up in his arms as if he were a baby, instead of a 165-pound boy, carried him after her and laid the injured lad out in the scant strip of shade afforded by the aeroplane. Then, with bits of canvas ripped from the cover which had served to conceal him when he entered the aerial vehicle, the strange wanderer skillfully bathed and then bandaged the wound.

”Nothing more than a bad sprain,” he announced.

Roy groaned.

”And just as I was going ahead at such tiptop speed, too,” he complained. ”I won't be able to use this arm for a month the way it feels.”

”Never mind, Roy, I can drive the aeroplane,” comforted Peggy. But Roy was fretful from pain.

”What can a girl do?” he demanded; ”this is a man's work. Oh, it's too bad! It's--”

Suddenly the pain-crazed lad realized what he was saying and broke off abruptly:

”Don't mind me, sis. I'm all worked up, I guess. But if it hadn't been for this delay we'd have beaten them out. And now--”

”And now the first thing to do is to see what ails this old machine,” said Professor Wandering William briskly. ”Let me lift you into the what-you-may-call-um, my boy, and make you as comfortable as possible on this canvas.”

The professor skillfully arranged the canvas from which he had cut the bandages, and making a pillow for Roy out of his own coat, he lifted the lad into the cha.s.sis.

”There now, you'll do,” he said, as his ministrations were completed. ”And now, young lady, as you know more about this thing than I do let's have a look at it and see what particular brand of illness it is suffering from.”

A brief examination showed Peggy that the radiator--the intricate mesh-work of pipes in which the circulating water for cooling the cylinders is kept at a low temperature--was leaking, and that almost all their supply of water had leaked out. This had caused the cylinders of the motor to overheat and had stopped the aeroplane in midair.

”Bad--is it?”'

Professor Wandering William noted the despairing look on Peggy's face as she discovered the cause of the stoppage.