Jack's legs were covered with
blood, and when the medical man saw whence it came, then and there
he set hastily to work to stop the bleeding from a large artery.
"You got back only just in time, my friend," he said to Tom, as Jack
was carried to a hospital. "Two minutes more and he would have been
bled to death."
CHAPTER XVII
A CRASH
Not until a day or so later, when Jack was able to sit up in bed and
greet Tom with rather a pale face, did the latter learn all that had
happened. And it was a very close call that Jack had had.
As Tom had guessed, it was some of the bullets from the Hun machine
gun that had stricken down his chum. One had struck him a glancing
blow on the head, rendering Jack unconscious and sending him down, a
crumpled-up heap in the cockpit of his machine. Another bullet,
coming through the machine later, had found lodgment in Jack's leg,
cutting part way through the wall of one of the larger arteries.
It was certain that this bullet, the one in the leg, came after Jack
was hit on the head, for that first wound was the only one he
remembered receiving.
"It was just as though I saw not only stars' but moons, suns,
comets, rainbows and northern lights all at once," he explained to
his chum.
The bullet in the leg had cut only part way through the wall of an
artery. At first the tissues held the blood back from spurting out
in a stream that would soon have carried life with it.
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