Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/234

 "No, but Buffum got a glimpse of his paw when he tied him up!"

"Tied him up before he smashed out the light?"

"Go on," insisted Turner eagerly. "I'll tell you my part when you finish your story. Go on! Go on!"

"Well, the exciting part about that right hand was that it held an automatic, but I had that out of his grasp with one grab. He wouldn't have had the strength to pull the trigger anyhow, for he was pretty near done for as it was. The rising of those limbs was just a sort of convulsion, I reckon. In two seconds more, we had him dug out and exposed to light, and a more perfect picture of abject misery I never saw. His face was nearly black from the smothering. A man of fifty-odd, he was, and a sinewy specimen for his age, and he must have had a ton of endurance, for how he managed to stump that far on that broken foot gets me."

"Then he broke it when he fell down the lighthouse stairs and—" Turner could not help putting in, but, as Hardy paused and seemed eager to have him go on, he declined to say more