Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle; Or, Fun and Adventures on the RoadAppleton, Victor
General
Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle; Or, Fun and Adventures on the Road
Appleton, Victor
Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction; Motorcycles -- Juvenile fiction; Swift, Tom (Fictitious character) -- Juvenile fiction
Several hours later Tom had a curious dream. He imagined he was
wandering about in the polar regions, and that it was very cold. He
was trying to reason with himself that he could not possibly be on
an expedition searching for the North Pole, still he felt such a
keen wind blowing over his scantily-covered body that he shivered.
He shivered so hard, in fact, that he shivered himself awake, and
when he tried to pierce the darkness that enveloped him he was
startled, for a moment, with the idea that perhaps, after all, he
had wandered off to some unknown country.
For it was quite dark and cold. He was in a daze, and there was a
curious smell about him--an odor that he tried to recall. Then, all
at once, it came to him what it was--chloroform. Once his father had
undergone an operation, and to deaden his pain chloroform had been
used.
"I've been chloroformed!" exclaimed the young inventor, and his
words sounded strange in his ears. "That's it. I've met with an
accident riding my motor-cycle. I must have hit my head, for it
hurts fearful. They picked me up, carried me to a hospital and have
operated on me. I wonder if they took off an arm or leg? I wonder
what hospital I'm in? Why is it so dark and cold?"
As he asked himself these questions his brain gradually cleared from
the haze caused by the cowardly blow, and from the chloroform that
had been administered by Featherton.
Tom's first act was to feel first of one arm, then the other. Having
satisfied himself that neither of these members were mutilated he
reached down to his legs.
"Why, they're all right, too," he murmured. "I wonder what they did
to me? That's certainly, chloroform I smell, and my head feels as if
some one had sat on it. I wonder--"
Quickly he put up his hands to his head. There appeared to be
nothing the matter with it, save that there was quite a lump on the
back, where the club had struck.
"I seem to be all here," went on Tom, much mystified. "But where am
I? That's the question. It's a funny hospital, so cold and dark--"
Just then his hands came in contact with the cold ground on which he
was lying.
"Why, I'm outdoors!" he exclaimed. Then in a flash it all came back
to him--how he had gone to wait under the church shed until the rain
was over.
"I fell asleep, and now it's night," the youth went on. "No wonder I
am sore and stiff. And that chloroform--" He could not account for
that, and he paused, puzzled once more. Then he struggled to a
sitting position. His head was strangely dizzy, but he persisted,
and got to his feet. He could see nothing, and groped around in the
dark, until he thought to strike a match. Fortunately he had a
number in his pocket. As the little flame flared up Tom started in
surprise.
"This isn't the church shed!" he exclaimed. "It's much smaller! I'm
in a different place! Great Scott! but what has happened to me?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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