IN SOUTH AMERICA
Although the two boys were woefully disappointed at not being able to
see anything of Trinidad, yet the fact that they were going to
Demerara and would actually have a chance to see something of South
America more than made up for it.
Rawlins assured them that in British Guiana they would find a far more
interesting spot than Trinidad and the boys plied him with questions.
“Isn’t that the place the blow gun and those poisoned arrows came
from?” asked Tom.
“Sure thing,” replied the diver. “I don’t know much about the
country--except what I’ve read and been told--but I’ve been at
Georgetown, or Demerara as it’s called, and you’ll find enough to keep
you busy right there.”
“Gosh, then there must be wild Indians there--if they use blow guns,”
said Frank. “Will we be able to see any of them?”
“Country’s full of them,” declared Rawlins. “But they’re all
peaceable. If we go trailing that plane into the bush as I want Mr.
Pauling to do, you’ll see Indians all right. If we don’t, you may see
a few in town. I’ve always wanted to get into the interior myself.
It’s a wonderful place--most of it unexplored--and there’s gold and
diamonds and wild animals and the highest waterfall in the world.”
“Now don’t get these boys all worked up over it, Rawlins,” laughed Mr.
Pauling. “If we don’t look out, they’ll mutiny and refuse to go home
until they’ve had their fill of sightseeing. I admit I’d like nothing
better than to stretch my legs ashore for a time and see something of
the country, but this is no pleasure jaunt, you know.”
“But if those men are there, we could go after them and then it
wouldn’t be a pleasure trip,” argued Tom.
“You can be sure it would not,” replied his father. “It’s bad enough
trailing those scoundrels all over the Caribbean, let alone trying to
run them to earth in a tropical jungle. No, I think our chase ends at
Georgetown.”
But Rawlins was not to be readily discouraged. He was a most
persistent character and having once made up his mind to follow the
“Reds” to “Kingdom Come,” as he put it, he was not easily to be
dissuaded. “I’ll say it would be a blamed shame to give up now,” he
declared. “We’ve got ’em narrowed down to two and the plane (the bunch
on the _Devon_ don’t count) and those two are the chaps you want,
Mr. Pauling. We’ve got ’em on the run--smoked ’em out of every hole
they had--chased ’em into the sea and under it and into the air. Now
they’ve played their last trump. We’d be a lot of boobs to let ’em get
away with it now.”
“But you seem to forget that we haven’t the least idea where they are
and that Guiana’s a big country,” Mr. Pauling reminded him. “I’ve been
going over the maps with Henderson and Disbrow and it’s hopeless. Why,
they may be in Dutch Guiana or Brazil or Venezuela by now. While we
were paddling up a few miles of jungle river, that plane could be
flying a couple of hundred miles. It would be worse than chasing a
bird with your hat.”
“Just the same I’ve a hunch that we’re going to get ’em,” declared
Rawlins. “And by glory, if you won’t go after ’em, I’m going to drop
off and go it alone!”
Mr. Pauling laughed. “Any one would think you had a personal grudge
against them,” he chuckled.
“So I have--confound them!” cried the diver. “Didn’t they cop my
diving suit idea and didn’t they play a dozen low-down, dirty tricks
on us? And weren’t they trying to stick a wurali-tipped dart in me
back there at St. John? Besides, I’ve never gone back on one of my
hunches yet and it’s too late to begin now.”
“Well, we’ll see what we find out over at Georgetown, before we
decide,” said Mr. Pauling. “After I talk with the officials we can
make plans for our next move. For all we know they may have important
information.”
The destroyer had now left Port of Spain far astern and was passing
out through the Bocas to the open sea. Throughout the afternoon she
steamed steadily eastward through the muddy water and when the boys
came on deck early the following morning there was still no sign of
land.
“Where’s Demerara?” asked Tom of the lieutenant in charge. “Commander
Disbrow said we’d be in by breakfast time, but I don’t see a sign of
land.”
“Straight ahead,” replied the officer. “There’s the lightship--see,
that little schooner there.”
“Yes I see it,” said Tom, “but what is it out in the ocean here for?”
The lieutenant laughed. “It’s not!” he replied. “We’re in the river
now. The lightship’s on the bar. We’ll be slowing down to take on the
pilot in a few moments.”
“In the river!” exclaimed Frank. “Oh, you’re just fooling! How can
this be a river when there are no banks?”
“Honest Injun, ’tis though,” declared the officer. “The banks are
there all right, but they’re so low you can’t see them and the river’s
thirty-five miles wide.”
“Jimminy crickets!” cried Tom. “Thirty-five miles wide! Say, I thought
the Amazon and the Orinoco were the only big rivers down here.”
“Oh, this is just a brook compared to the Amazon,” said the
lieutenant, “but it’s wider than the Orinoco. It’s really the mouth of
two big rivers--the Demerara and the Essequibo. Look, there comes the
pilot.”
A small boat had put off from the lightship and came bobbing towards
the destroyer, which had slowed down, and presently a grizzled old
negro came scrambling over the side.
With all the pomposity and dignity of an admiral he saluted the
lieutenant and climbed to the bridge and a moment later the destroyer
was steaming once more on its way under the guidance of the
incongruous old negro. Presently, far ahead, the boys saw bits of hazy
detached land. Then tall chimneys of sugar mills and the slender
towers of a wireless station became visible; the detached bits of dull
green, which the boys had taken for islands, joined and formed a low
green bank, and before they realized it, the boys found they were
passing up a wide muddy stream and that roofs, buildings and spires of
a large town were just ahead.
“Gosh, isn’t everything flat!” exclaimed Frank. “I don’t see a hill or
a mountain or anything but that line of low brush anywhere. And the
town looks as if it were below the water.”
“So it is,” replied Commander Disbrow. “Or rather it’s below the water
level. There’s a dyke or sea wall to keep the water out, there are
canals running through the streets to drain the place and there are
big tide gates, or ‘kokers’ as they call them, which are closed at
high tide and opened at low water.”
“Why, it must be like Holland then!” exclaimed Tom.
“It used to be Dutch,” explained the Commander, “and the Dutchmen
always seem to like to build towns below sea level--sort of habit, I
guess--though why they didn’t put it on high land up the river a bit
gets me. You’ll find Dutch names everywhere, too, and old Dutch
buildings, and if you went a hundred miles or so up the Essequibo
you’d find an old Dutch fort.”
The destroyer had now drawn close to the town and a few minutes later
was being moored to the government dock.
From the height of the vessel’s decks the boys could look right over
the buildings. Beyond the sea of roofs and spires they could see
waving palms, long avenues of green shade trees and busy, interesting
streets and they were fairly crazy to go ashore.
The arrival of an American warship at Demerara was such an unusual
event that a huge crowd had collected at the pier and among the
multicolored throng of black, white, and yellow were the gold lace and
uniforms of officers.
Knowing that his father and the others would be thoroughly occupied in
the formalities of an official welcome, Tom asked permission to go
ashore with Frank and Rawlins and scarcely was the destroyer moored
when the three darted down the gangway and edging through the crowd
came out on the noisy, busy street.
“Gee, this is some town!” exclaimed Tom as the three glanced about.
“They’ve automobiles and trolley cars and everything.”
“Sure it’s some town!” agreed Rawlins. “Come on, let’s take a carriage
and drive about. We’ll see it quicker and better that way.”
Tumbling into a rubber-tired Victoria driven by a grinning negro, the
diver told him to drive them about Georgetown and out to the botanic
station.
The boys were wildly enthusiastic over everything and Rawlins, who was
almost as much of a boy as themselves, pointed out the more
interesting features of the place. The picturesque Hindu men and
women, who, garbed in their native costumes, swarmed everywhere,
fascinated the boys. They were delighted with the shady streets, with
the cool houses half-hidden in masses of strange tropical flowers, and
they reveled in the calm canals spanned by Oriental-looking bridges
and filled with pink lotus and water lilies.
“It’s the quaintest, prettiest place I’ve ever seen!” declared Tom.
“And so foreign looking.”
“And these bright red roads!” exclaimed Frank. “And all those East
Indians! Why, it’s like being in another world!”
“And just look at the way all the houses are built on posts or brick
pillars!” put in Tom.
“Yes, that’s to keep them dry,” Rawlins explained. “In the rainy
season the streets get flooded at times and so they build their houses
on stilts.”
But all the other sights they had seen were forgotten when at last
they came to the huge botanic station. Here they drove for miles
through a veritable tropical forest among gigantic trees, under
trailing lianas, beside jungle streams, all of which, as far as
appearances went, might have been in the very heart of South America.
But everywhere the red earth roads were as smooth and well kept as
asphalt, the grass was green and velvety, beds of gorgeous flowers
were all about, and all the trees and plants were carefully labeled.
Only such things were in evidence to show it was a park or garden and
not the untamed wild and when, to the boys’ delight, they saw a flock
of gaudy parrots feeding overhead and caught a glimpse of huge-billed
toucans, they felt as though they were actually in the “bush.”
Everywhere, too, were canals filled with the gigantic leaves and huge
flowers of the Victoria Regia lily and at one spot was a lily and
lotus-filled lake, bordered with thickets of palms and fairly swarming
with herons, egrets, and boat-bills, with a pair of great, scarlet
macaws screeching from a dead limb over the water.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Frank. “It’s like a zoological garden, only better.
Oh, look, look there! What’s that?” As he spoke, a great, dark object
had risen through the water and with a hissing noise slowly
disappeared.
“Only a manatee,” laughed Rawlins. “Didn’t you recognize it? It was
one of those fellows that led you astray in Santo Domingo, you know.”
“But I never expected to see one here, right in the town,” declared
Frank.
“Lots of ’em in here,” said the diver, “and plenty of alligators too.
But everywhere you go about Georgetown you’ll find wild animals and
birds. See herons and egrets feeding beside the roads and scarlet ibis
on the mud flats alongside the docks. The city’s just at the edge of
the jungle, you might say, and you could go right through to the
Amazon without ever seeing a sign of civilization.”
“Golly, I do hope Dad goes after those fellows!” cried Tom. “After
seeing this place I’m just crazy to see the real jungle.”
“And Indians!” added Frank.
“Well, I’ve a hunch he’s going,” declared Rawlins. “I’ll bet a dollar
to a sixpence we’re all in the jungle inside of three days.”
From the gardens they drove through a picturesque village, swarming
with East Indians, to the seawall, then through the town to the
market, out to a big sugar estate with miles of enormous royal palms
bordering the road, and finally to the museum where they spent an hour
or more looking at the collections of native birds, animals, insects
and Indian curios.
When at last they boarded the destroyer in time for lunch, they found
Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson in earnest conversation with a tall,
lean-faced, quiet man dressed in spotless white and a short,
roly-poly, red-faced officer who wore a gorgeous uniform and whose
enormous, fiercely twisted mustaches belied the merry twinkle in his
eyes.
“It’s all right, Tom, come in, and you too, Frank, and you, Rawlins,”
cried Mr. Pauling, as Tom, who had burst impetuously into the room,
saw that his father was engaged and hastened to withdraw. “This is
Colonel Maidely,” he continued, introducing the officer, “and this is
Mr. Thorne. We’ve been discussing Rawlins’ idea of going into the bush
after those rascals. By the way, Rawlins, I told the Colonel your
opinion of him for letting the _Devon_ slip by and he’s prepared
to take a good dressing down!”
The jovial officer laughed heartily. “’Pon my word I deserve it!” he
declared. “Jolly stupid of me, eh? Fact was we were all so interested
in the two chaps with the plane we were careless--yes, I’ll admit it.
Wager you if it hadn’t been for that we’d have suspected her. Jolly
clever idea that--pulling the wool over our eyes with the airship! And
my word! What nerve, as you Yankees say--using a name as much like
_Devon_ as _Devonshire_! But we’ll get her yet, old
dear--don’t worry.”
“And I’m beginning to think your idea is worth trying, Rawlins,” went
on Mr. Pauling. “Mr. Thorne here is an explorer--just came in from a
long trip through the interior, and the Colonel says he knows more
about the bush than the Indians themselves. He says it will be easy to
trace the plane--just as you did--and he seems to think that in all
probability they landed somewhere and will await word from their
confederates that we’ve abandoned the chase when they can safely come
out of hiding.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Tom, quite forgetful of the strangers’ presence.
“Then we _are_ going into the bush!”
“Provided I can induce Mr. Thorne to accompany us,” said his father.
“None of us knows anything about the interior and we’d be helplessly
at sea.”
“Oh, you will go, won’t you?” begged Frank. “We’re crazy to see
Indians and wild animals and everything.”
The explorer smiled at the boys’ enthusiasm. “I’m inclined to think I
will,” he replied. “I had hoped to go to the States next week--my work
is done--but I’m anxious to be of any service I can to Uncle Sam, as
well as to my British Colonial friends, and I’m still young enough in
spirit, if not in years, to love adventure and excitement, and this
trip promises both. Yes, Mr. Pauling, you can count on me and the
sooner we get off the better.”
“Hurrah! Hip hurrah!” yelled the two boys, fairly dancing with joy.
“Bully for you!” cried Rawlins grasping Mr. Thorne’s hand. “I’ll say
you’re a good sport. Didn’t I tell you we’d be in the bush in three
days, boys?”
“Well I hope the rest of your hunch comes true as quickly,” laughed
Mr. Pauling. “I’ve been telling the Colonel and Mr. Thorne about your
famous hunches and the way they’ve saved the day so many times.”
“Bet you didn’t tell them about the inspector over at Trinidad
thinking they were a new Yankee drink!” chuckled the diver.
“My word, that _is_ rich!” choked Colonel Maidely when the
laughter had subsided, “Jolly good joke! Just like old May--wait ’til
I tell that to His Excellency and to Philip! By Jove, yes!”
Mr. Thorne rose. “I’ll be starting things going,” he announced. “Can
you gentlemen be ready to leave to-morrow morning? I think my Indian
boys are still here--at least some of them are, and if we get off on
to-morrow morning’s steamer so much the better.”
“We can be ready,” Mr. Pauling assured him. “I suppose we had better
take a radio outfit along.”
“By all means,” replied the other. “Doubtless these men with the plane
are in touch with events by radio and I count largely on trailing them
by that means. I understand you boys have a radio compass outfit.”
“Better than that,” declared Tom. “We’ve got a resonance coil.”
“Well, take it,” directed the explorer. “Don’t bother about the rest
of the outfit--except arms and ammunition and old clothes. I’ll see to
supplies and camp kit.”
“Gosh, isn’t it great?” exclaimed Tom after Mr. Thorne had gone. “Just
to think we’re really going into the jungle!”
“You bet!” agreed Frank.
“And when we get back we can go looking for that loot that they hid,”
went on Tom, “unless these rascals confess and tell us where it is.”
“Jehoshaphat! I’d forgotten all about that,” exclaimed Frank.
“You might just as well forget it, once and for all,” declared Mr.
Pauling, laughing at the boys’ enthusiasm. “I don’t think even Rawlins
has any idea of being able to recover that.”
“I’ll say I have!” cried the diver. “But it will take some figuring
with what we have to go on. But I’m more keen on getting the old High
Muck-a-Muck and his mate than finding that loot just now.”
Throughout the rest of the day the boys busied themselves with
preparations for their trip, going over their radio instruments and
packing the few belongings they were to take with them. Finally, in
the evening, when Mr. Pauling and Mr. Henderson left for the reception
at Government House, they took another long drive about the town and
outlying country with Rawlins. Early the next morning, Mr. Thorne
arrived, accompanied by two short, stockily built, broad-faced, brown
men, who shouldered the party’s baggage and carried it to a waiting
cart.
“Everything’s arranged,” the explorer told Mr. Pauling. “Most of my
boys have gone up the river, but I telegraphed for them to be ready
and I found a couple of them still in town.”
“Why, were those men you brought Indians?” asked Tom in surprise. “I
thought they were Chinese or something.”
“Akawoias,” replied Mr. Thorne. “All the Indians here have a Mongolian
appearance.”
“Gosh, if I’d known that, I’d have been more interested,” declared
Frank.
“You’ll see them and a lot more for day after day,” laughed the
explorer, “and you’ll find them very decent boys. They’ve been with me
for months.”
“Do they talk English?” asked Tom.
“Well, not exactly,” replied Mr. Thorne. “They have a queer jargon
they call ‘talky-talky’--something like Pigeon English. You’ll learn
to speak it easily enough. Now if you’re all ready, let’s be off. The
boat leaves in half an hour.”
“By the way,” remarked the explorer, as the party left the destroyer
and walked up the street towards the dock or “stelling” where the
river steamer was moored, “I’ve a bit of news for you. The seaplane
passed over Wismar and was headed almost due south. I think that
rather does away with the idea that they were making for Venezuela or
Dutch Guiana.”
“Hmm,” muttered Mr. Pauling. “Is there any place in that vicinity
where they could hide?”
“It’s the least known district in the entire colony,” Mr. Thorne
assured him. “Until I explored it, the upper reaches of the Demerara
were absolutely unknown--even the source of the river had never been
discovered--and between the Berbice and the Essequibo rivers above the
Demerara is a vast area of absolutely unexplored territory. They could
come down anywhere in that district without the slightest chance of
being seen--except by Indians--and it’s near enough the coast to be in
radio communication with a confederate here or a ship at sea. But my
own opinion is that their friends are over in Dutch Guiana. Judging by
your experiences, they have a particular fondness for the Dutch and
Dutch colonies.”
“Could they communicate with people there at this distance?” asked Mr.
Henderson.
“I don’t see why not,” replied the explorer. “In a direct line,
Paramaribo, the capital and port, is a little over two hundred miles
distant. Of course, I do not know the sending range of the plane’s
outfit, but they could certainly receive and I suppose that’s just as
important.”
“If they’ve got as good an outfit on the plane as they had on the sub
and at St. John they could send twice that distance,” declared Tom.
“Do you understand radio, Mr. Thorne?”
The explorer smiled, “As Colonel Maidley would say, ‘rawther’,” he
replied. “I don’t suppose I’m up-to-date, but it is something of a
hobby with me.”
“Gee, that’s bully!” cried Tom. “Did Dad tell you about our subsea
radio?”
Once started on this subject the two boys and Mr. Thorne forgot all
else and held an animated conversation which continued without
cessation until they reached the little river steamer and the boys’
interests were aroused by new sights.
Never had the two boys seen such an odd, many colored cosmopolitan
crowd as thronged the “stelling” and the boat. Swathed in cotton,
bare-legged and with their heads covered with immense turbans of red,
white, or green the East Indian men stalked about. There were Parsees
with their odd embroidered hats; Brahmins with the painted marks of
holy men upon their foreheads; fakirs in rags, with long matted hair
and beards, carrying their highly polished brass begging bowls and
their goatskins as their total possessions; fat, sleek “Baboos” in
silk, protecting their turbaned heads under huge, green umbrellas;
and East Indian women by the score, ablaze with color and laden down
with heavy barbaric jewelry, their wrists, ankles and arms encircled
by scores of heavy bands and rings of beaten silver and gold, their
sleek, black hair bound with dangling silver and jeweled ornaments,
huge golden hoops in their noses--clad, besides, in brilliant
embroidered jackets, fluttering gauze veils and silken draperies. A
chattering, dark-hued throng that transformed the spot to a bit of
India. Back and forth among them, elbowed the big, burly
negroes--“pork knockers,” as Mr. Thorne called them--each carrying his
“battell” or gold pan strapped to his pack and all bound for the gold
and diamond diggings. Chinese there were too, prosperous merchants in
European garments; farmers with huge, saucerlike hats, loose trousers
and blouses; Chinese women in flapping, pajamalike costumes, and
toddling Chinese kiddies that might have stepped from an Oriental
screen. To swell the crowd and add to the multiplicity of
nationalities there were sallow Portuguese, mulattoes, quadroons, and
octoroons; bronzed English planters; dark-eyed Venezuelans;
broad-shouldered, mighty-muscled “Boviander” rivermen; and half a
dozen short, deep-chested, stolid-faced native Indians or “bucks,” as
the explorer told the boys they were called.
And such confusion! Such a chaos of live stock, baggage, squalling
babies, and wildly clucking and clacking fowls! How they would ever
get straightened out; how they would ever find their own belongings,
or how the tiny side-wheel steamer could ever accommodate them all was
a mystery to the boys. But gradually order came out of chaos; the big,
heavily booted, blue-clad “bobbies” shooed and berated and shoved and
ordered and helped and at last, with a toot of the whistle, the gang
plank was drawn in, the mooring lines were cast off and loaded to the
gunwales, the little steamer swung into the swirling muddy stream and
poked her blunt bow up river to the deafening cheers, farewells, and
parting shouts of the kaleidoscopic crowd upon the stelling.
“Well, we’re off!” exclaimed Rawlins, “We may not know where we’re
going but we’re on our way!”
“Yes, and to think we’re way down in South America!” cried Tom. “I
can’t really believe it yet.”
“It isn’t much like the popular idea of South America, I admit,”
laughed the explorer who had joined them. “But you’ve only begun to
see unexpected and surprising things.”
“You’ll have to tell us everything,” declared Frank. “We want to learn
all we can and everything’s absolutely new to us, you know.”
“I’ll do my best,” replied Mr. Thorne, “but even I learn something new
every time I go into the bush.”
“If we learn where that plane’s hanging out, I’ll be satisfied,”
declared the diver.