[Illustration: Down Dropped the Bag.]

Down Dropped the Bag.


Pausing only long enough to learn that Jack’s pulses were beating, and
that the submarine boy was breathing, Truax stole off into the night,
carrying the bag of sand under his overcoat. At one point he paused long
enough to empty the sand from the bag over a fence. The bag itself he
afterwards burned in the open fireplace in the room assigned to him at
Holt’s Hotel.

For twenty minutes Jack Benson lay as he had been left. Then he began to
stir, and groan. Then he opened his eyes; after a while he managed to sit
up.

“Ugh!” he grunted. “What’s the odor? Liquor! How does that happen? Oh, my
head!”

He got slowly to his feet, using the board fence as a means to help steady
himself. Then, though he found himself weak and tormented by the pain in
his head, Benson managed to feel his way along the fence until he came to
the opening made by the loose board. Holding himself here, he thrust his
head beyond.

Now, Hal and Eph, having waited for some time at the shore boat, before
going out on board the “Farnum,” had at last made up their minds to go
back and look for their missing leader. They came along just at the moment
that the young captain’s head appeared through the opening in the fence.