eg below the
knee, and with the barrel of your revolver twist it as tight as you
possibly can, tourniquet fashion, so as to stop the passage of the blood
into your body. Now," as he drew forth and opened a penknife, the blade
of which he made a point of always keeping razor-keen, "I am going to
hurt you a little bit, so set your teeth and bear it, old man."

"All right; go ahead," responded Grosvenor. "Was the brute venomous,
then?"

"Can't say," responded Dick evasively, as he quickly slashed the flesh
across and across over the two punctures; "but we are not taking any
more chances to-day, my boy."

The blood, instead of spurting from the knife wounds, oozed forth thick
and sluggishly; whereupon Dick, without a second's hesitation, applied
his lips to the gashes, which were close together, and sucked strongly
for about a quarter of an hour, spitting out the blood which gradually
began to flow a little more freely. Finally, when the flow had ceased,
he groped in his pocket and produced a small case containing a stick of
lunar caustic; then from another pocket he drew forth a box of matches,
which he handed to Grosvenor.

"I'll relieve you of this," he said, laying his hand upon the revolver,
the barrel of which Phil had twisted in the handkerchief and had been
holding in place all this while, "and you can start striking matches, so
that I may see what I am doing." Then, giving the revolver an extra
twist or two, he pulled out his own handkerchief and deftly secured the
weapon in place, after which he proceeded, by the light of the matches
which Grosvenor struck, one after the other, carefully and thoroughly to
cauterize the wounds.

"There," he remarked cheerfully, with a sigh of relief as he finished
his task, "that is as much as we can do here. The next thing is to get
you back to the camp as soon as possible."

"All right," assented Grosvenor. "But," he added, as he attempted to
rise, "I'm afraid I shall have to get you to help me, old chap; I
couldn't possibly--"

"Of course you couldn't," responded Dick, "and I don't mean that you
shall try. Just sit where you are for a little while longer, and leave
me to arrange things." Therewith he drew a whistle from the pocket of
his hunting shirt, and upon it blew three piercing blasts in quick
succession that, in the breathless stillness of the night, might have
been heard at least a mile away. He repeated the signal at brief
intervals for about ten minut