Neither then nor at any other time was Clay permitted to speak to his
chums of the loss of the gold. He was allowed, briefly, to explain that
two men who claimed to be interested in motor boats had approached him
as he re-entered the restaurant, that he had invited them to seats at
the table, where he had ordered another cup of coffee—the quality served
before having been excellent—that he had felt drowsy after drinking one
cup, and that the next he knew the boys were pulling him to his feet.
That was all.
There was no doubt in the minds of the boys that the coffee had been
drugged in the kitchen before being brought to the table, or that the
two men were confederates of the restaurant keeper; but they were in no
position to demand investigation in a hostile country, and so resolved
to continue their journey up the Amazon and say nothing more about it.
There were even suspicions in the minds of Clay and Case that the whole
thing had been planned by Frank’s old enemies to keep the _Rambler_ tied
up in the harbor for a long time, as well as to acquire the gold the boy
had so freely shown.
“The people who are trying to keep Frank away from that strange and
mysterious Cloud island are at the bottom of it,” was Case’s final
comment on the incident.
However, the boys were now well supplied with gasoline and provisions,
and there would be no further need of stopping at any town for a long
time. Frank seemed to have lost his desire for great speed, after
leaving the Madeira, and so the _Rambler_ lolled along the river for all
the world like a boat out with a summer-day picnic party.
Now and then the boy watched the down-stream country with a glass, as if
expecting to see a steamer with green and yellow stripes on her stack
shooting swiftly against the current. Again, he sat for hours on the
little stern platform at night, watching the river and the shores for a
light which he never discovered.
“What has gotten into the lad?” Case asked, one night when the _Rambler_
lay at anchor in a bay just above the Rio Negro river. “He seems to be
watching for some sign or signal, but refuses to tell what it is.”
No one ventured a reply, and Jule pointed away to the valley of the Rio
Negro.
“That river,” he said, to change the subject, “is a thousand miles long.
Its head waters rise in Columbia and Guiana. Perhaps some of the water
that trickles down to the Amazon comes from the oldest land on the
continent.”
“I guess not!” Alex interrupted. “The oldest land is somewhere near the
center of Peru.”
“The oldest land is in Guiana,” insisted Jule. “Many millions of years
ago an island rose out of the water there. That was the first of the
continent of South America. The Andes were forced up later by the
wrinkling of the crust of the earth as it dried out. But the Andes
lifted and lowered a great many times before they got their noses into
the air for keeps. Why, there is a salt spring 14,000 feet above sea
level down here. That deposit of salt was made when the ocean washed the
spot where it lies!”
“There’s gold down here, too,” Alex declared. “I’ve read that the gold
mines of Peru were sealed up when the Spanish came, and that they have
never been discovered to this day.”
“What do you know about that, Frank?” asked Case, as the boy came up.
Frank made no reply, but walked back to his old place on the rear
platform, which he reached by creeping over the low roof of the cabin.
“Perhaps there is gold on this Cloud island,” suggested Jule.
“There is something there worth fighting for,” Case argued. “Then, where
did the kid get all that gold? He brought it out with him, you know, and
hid it in a tree!”
“Ho, ho!” laughed Jule, “there are no twenty-dollar gold pieces down in
the mines of Peru. All that gold he brought out saw the little old U. S.
long before it saw Peru!”
The boys held many such conversations as this as they proceeded up the
river of their dreams. They never forgot those days and nights on the
Amazon, the splendid panorama of forest and stream ever before their
eyes, the perfect freedom from the restraints of city life.
They were nearly under the equator, it is true, and the heat was almost
unbearable at times. The insects were numerous and annoying. But, after
all, they were out in the open, and they were free! The average lad of
seventeen will endure many privations and suffer many physical penalties
just to be free—to be brother for a time to the woods, the blue sky, and
the running water!
Many an evening, in spite of the heat, they built great cooking fires in
some alluring cove and made a supper of fish, turtle eggs dug out of the
sand, and the flesh of a fowl resembling wild turkey. The boy dearly
loves to cook by a campfire! Often they got into territory which the
ants seemed to claim as their own, and now and then an anaconda or an
alligator supplied a mark for their revolvers.
Those were entrancing moonlit nights. Often natives came from small
villages and visited with them. Traders are numerous along the Amazon,
and in nearly every settlement of natives there are some who speak
English and Spanish. As a rule the Indians were friendly and willing to
assist in the capture of game, but now and then the boys were glad to
get away from the vicinity of a town or a plantation because of the
vicious nature of the natives.
The owners of the plantations they visited were usually Spanish, or of
Spanish descent. Their workmen were invariably natives. There are more
villages and cities on the banks of the upper Amazon than the maps show,
and the boys made a point of stopping at most of them. In fact, Frank
seemed determined to hold a conversation with someone in every
settlement they came to. Sometimes he would go ashore alone in the
row-boat and remain for a long time in conference with a planter or one
employed thereabouts.
“He’s asking questions about Cloud island!” Jule explained, whenever
this strange habit of the boy’s was referred to.
However, the boys liked best to get away from all civilization and tie
up at night in a little creek or bay, or in a channel forming one side
of an island.
Here they caught fish, fought ants, captured opossums, and beat the
thickets for monkeys and snakes.
The opossums of Brazil are not much larger than a good-sized rat, but
they are very good eating. Fish are plentiful, and there is plenty of
small game in the forests, so the boys had lots of fresh food to eat. In
that hot climate, however, it was necessary to procure fresh game every
day, as putrefaction soon sets in. Fish taken from the river soon
becomes offensive unless cut into thin strips and dried in the sunshine.
Ever since leaving the Madeira the boys had slept in hammocks swung from
strong uprights on the forward deck. The deck was shut in by wire
netting, which afforded them partial protection from the insects. But of
course the impudent blood-seekers hung constantly about, and more than
one found its way into this screened place when the one door, opening at
the side, was in use.
Lizards of all sizes, shapes and dispositions managed to take passage on
the _Rambler_, much to the disgust of the boys and the anger of Captain
Joe, who attacked them relentlessly but could not keep the boat free of
them. But if the lizards and snakes and ants were unwelcome guests on
the boat and at the little camps, there were plenty of other visitors
who more than compensated for them. These were the birds, whose shrill
voices and brilliant coloring made the night as well as the day musical
and gay. Taken all in all, the life the boys lived there on the mighty
river, under the equator, was ideal from a boy’s viewpoint.
There were, besides many birds well known at the North, kingfishers,
green and blue tree-creepers, purple-headed tanagers, and humming birds.
Butterflies were everywhere, of every size and color. And there were the
cicadas, at home in every tree, sending out their jarring, reedy notes.
The forests were alive with sound, and the lads realized that even the
roar of Chicago would sometimes be small beside the constant ring of
wild life.
One of the native weapons in use on the upper Amazon quite fascinated
Jule, and he never gave over bartering with the Indians until he secured
one. This was a zarabatana, or blow-gun. It consists of a hollow tube
through which an arrow is shot by the breath. The arrows are sharp as a
needle and are winged with fluff from the seed-vessels of the cotton
tree. The arrows are expelled with such force that the sound of their
exit from the muzzle is something like that made by a popgun. They are
frequently tipped with the fatal urari poison.
One night, under the brilliant light of the moon, the boys saw a black
tiger or jaguar drinking at the edge of the little creek in which their
boat lay. They were anxious to take the fellow’s hide as a souvenir of
the trip, and so Clay and Alex cautiously left the boat and struck into
the forest back of the spot where the tiger was quenching his thirst. He
threw up his muzzle and dropped his ears, like a great cat, at the first
motion on the shore.
Captain Joe, quivering with excitement, and entirely beyond control,
leaped to the shore and headed for the tiger, which backed, snarling,
into the jungle which the boys had thought to surround. The dog followed
on until he reached the spot from which the beast had disappeared. In a
moment Alex and Clay were at his side, the former trying to force his
way into the thicket. Finally he pressed in a yard or two and called to
the dog to follow.
But Captain Joe was evidently going out of the tiger-hunting game
without loss of time, for he tilted his nose in the air, gave one growl
of defiance, and walked away in a very dignified manner indeed.
“There,” Clay exclaimed, “Captain Joe knows more about tigers than we
do, so we’ll go back to the _Rambler_.”
The waters of the upper Amazon are filled with alligators of all sizes.
They occasionally swarmed about the boat, and Captain Joe appeared to
enjoy watching their hungry little eyes as they gazed up at his plump
shoulders. Sometimes, while sleeping in rude hammocks swung from trees
and poles on sandy shores, the boys were disturbed by the reptiles.
After midnight, however, the alligators keep away from the sands of the
shores, at least where there is a considerable stretch of it, for the
radiation of heat during the night from the sand makes these resting
spots cool, even chilly, in the morning.
And so the boys leisurely proceeded up the Amazon, stopping to fish, to
hunt turtle eggs, to watch the monkeys climbing the great trees, to hunt
the black tiger in the thickets and the alligators in the rivers. They
frequently spoke with traders on the river, and now and then heard news
from Chicago.
At last, along about the middle of September, they came to Tabatinga,
where the Amazon enters Ecuador. Here they secured additional supplies
of gasoline and such provisions as they would need and made a few
repairs to the boat. The upper Amazon country is never very “dry,” as
storms are likely to come on at any time during the early fall, so the
boys set up a little stove in the cabin and made ready for the days of
slow rain and wind which might come on.
From the time of leaving Marajo island they had not seen or heard of the
_Señorita_, and the boys, all save Frank, were flattering themselves
that the pursuit had ceased. They had passed, and been passed, by many
steamers on the river, but none of them resembled the little vessel they
had first seen on the South Branch. But at Tabatinga their dream of
being free from pursuit by Frank’s enemies vanished.