Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/232

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The Boy Scouts of the Air

and took a look over. No human being was in sight, but there were marks as of a body that had rolled down. We were on the trail.

"Leading from this little valley, there was a sort of pass between the sand hills. So we snaked around, making a wide detour and crawled up to the top of one of these. Tracks were distinctly visible in the depression. We slid down and followed these to a broad stretch of sandy ground beyond. You remember that well enough. There was the trail plain as day. The man had evidently been dragging along by the hardest effort. Now and then, we could see traces of his having sat down or lain in the sand. At the distance of about a quarter of a mile, in a more exposed place, the tracks disappeared, evidently covered by the wind-blown sand, but we calculated it would have been impossible for a man in the condition Cat described to get much further in the short time since the collision.

"To avoid the chance of being pinked from cover, we slipped up to the top of a dune near the ocean and tried to search with our eyes every foot of ground around. Suddenly I lit on a