The boys gathered around Frank as he took the papers into his hands and
ran them over hastily.
“Are they really maps of Cloud island?” asked Clay.
“Where is this Cloud island?” demanded Alex, grinning at the old
question.
“What are the maps good for?” added Jule.
“How far is it to Cloud island?” asked Case.
“One question at a time, boys,” smiled Frank. “I’ll tell you all about
Cloud island now.”
This statement was so extraordinary, in view of the boy’s previous
reticence on the subject, that even Captain Joe arose and looked the
speaker in the face and wagged his tail in applause.
“Cloud island,” began Frank, but Clay caught him by the arm and pointed
to the _Señorita_, now under full headway, steaming up the river.
“There comes your Señor Lewiso,” he raid.
“Looks like he wants our maps!” Alex observed.
The boys, at Frank’s request, did not increase the speed of the
_Rambler_. Instead, they loitered in order that the _Señorita_ might
come up with them.
“What’s the notion?” asked Alex. “You ain’t going to give up those maps,
are you, Frank!”
“Did you met this Señor Lewiso while on shore?” Frank answered the
question with another, as the steamer came abreast of the _Rambler_.
The boy shook his head.
“We were too busy doing those other chaps out of the maps,” he said.
When the _Señorita_ came abreast the young man with the scar on his face
was seen on deck, gazing impudently at the boys.
“Fine day!” yelled Jule, making a wry face.
Clay gave a gesture of disapproval, but the boy went on:
“Is this your river?”
There was no answer whatever from Señor Lewiso, but someone not in view
called out, in good English:
“You know it! The river and all the islands in it!”
“Going to take the river up as you pass along?” demanded Alex.
“Oh, quit it!” Case exclaimed. “There is nothing to be gained by that
sort of thing.”
“He looked so bossy,” commented Alex, “that I didn’t know but he had the
key to the river in his pocket! He doesn’t look good to me, no way you
can put it!”
The _Señorita_ swept on, and was soon lost to sight behind an island.
Then an entirely unexpected sight presented itself.
A boat which looked like a launch, fitted with motors and well filled
with tanks and crates, shot out of a little bay and followed the
steamer. Frank sprang for the glass and succeeded in getting a good view
of the two occupants before the craft made the angle of the island just
ahead.
“Where did that come from?” questioned Jule. “Say, but she is going
after the _Señorita_!”
“It looks that way,” agreed Alex.
“There go the two Englishmen!” Frank said, laying down the glass, as the
launch disappeared from sight. “They are going to follow the _Señorita_
to Cloud island.”
“Whew!” ejaculated Case. “This Cloud island seems to be in good demand.
I hope they won’t carry it away before we get there!”
“Go on and tell us about it now,” Alex said, turning to Frank. “The
pursuers are all in the lead!”
“Yes, we’re all crazy to know about Cloud island!” Jule added.
“But there is one thing I don’t understand,” Case observed. “These
people have been following on behind us up to now. Why do they shoot
ahead at this stage of the race?”
Frank’s face broke into a smile.
“It seems to me,” he replied, “that I am believed by my enemies to be
out of the game just now! They appear to have left me for the pleasure
of pursuing each other!”
“And you are sauntering along in order that they may have their wish and
fight it out between themselves.
“Something like that,” Frank replied. “When we met those two men on
Ruination creek, I knew that they would keep the Señor Lewiso rather
busy, if they succeeded in getting up the river. I doubted their ability
to continue their journey, for they seemed to be in hard luck, but,
thinking they might, I watched and inquired all along to see if they had
gone on up ahead of us.”
“I thought you acted strangely,” Clay said.
“I had about given up all idea of their being anywhere near here when
the boys came upon them to-day,” Frank went on. “Where they secured
their outfit is more than I can imagine, but they certainly are in the
contest in excellent form. The Señor Lewiso will be troubled when he
sees the launch chasing him.”
“Will the first one at Cloud island get what they are all going after?”
questioned Jule. “Will they get what we are going in search of, do you
think.”
“Of course not!” Alex answered. “Don’t you forget that Frank knows
what’s he doing, loitering along the river. I guess he knows what he is
about part of the time!”
“The fact is,” Frank replied, guardedly, “that neither one of them can
secure the Cloud island prize without help from me.”
“Oh!” grunted Jule.
“Then they’ll have to wait for you to come up?” asked Alex. “If that is
the idea, why don’t they stick around with you?”
“Each one,” laughed Frank, “seems to have the idea that the other
possesses the information I have.”
“I see!” grinned Alex. “And you’re going to let ’em fight it out?”
“That is my present intention.”
“But if they fight it out and discover that they have fought the wrong
parties, what then?”
“Then the ones left alive will want to fight it out with me!”
“Then there’s going to be a scrap!” Jule exclaimed. “Some day they are
sure to find out that they’ve each been watching the wrong party!”
“Now, if you have satisfied the curiosity of these young sleuths,” Clay
remarked, “perhaps they will permit you to tell us about Cloud island,
and what reward is sought there.”
From far up the shining surface of the river, its sound somewhat
deadened by the intervening island, came the report of a gun. In a
minute there came a second shot.
“The _Señorita_ doesn’t like to be hugged by the launch!” smiled Case.
“It is a case of war there!” Frank observed. “I’m glad I have two
parties opposed to me instead of one! They enjoy fighting each other, it
seems!”
“Every time you get ready to tell us about Cloud island,” Clay laughed,
“there is an interruption. Let them fight it out, if they will, and you
go on with the story of that wonderful place.”
Another reverberation came down the river, and then silence. There was
no more shooting at that time.
“Nearly a thousand miles from here, as the river runs,” Frank began,
“the Amazon turns south and follows a valley running along between two
giant ridges of the Andes. Three or four hundred miles from the point
where it changes its course, it finds its source in a small mountain
lake. This lake is not much more more than one hundred miles from Lima,
the capital of Peru.”
“The Amazon draws water almost from the Pacific!” Jule interrupted.
“Yes, it comes very near crossing the continent of South America,” Frank
went on. “Well, about half way between the source and the point I have
mentioned lies Cloud island, not in the center of the river, but so
setting over to a rocky shore that the channel between the rocks and the
island is very narrow at low water.”
“Low water?” asked Alex. “What makes high and low water away up in the
Andes?”
“Rains, of course,” replied Frank. “During the wet season, which is due
to begin up there before long, now, the Amazon sometimes rises from
twenty to forty feet. Well, it is these inundations that make Cloud
island valuable.”
“Like the valley of the Nile,” Alex hinted.
“Not at all in that way! It is believed that Cloud island was once an
active volcano. Its top lifts above the river, at low water, about
thirty feet. The summit is not more than ten acres in extent, and is as
level as this deck, except that it tips gradually to the north.”
“Just a mountain tableland?” asked Alex.
“Yes, and not a very high one at that. But what makes the upper level so
peculiar is that in the center there is a great crater, which sends out
smoke and steam which at times hide the land. Hence the name Cloud
island.”
“Why, of course!” Jule interrupted. “That is a volcanic region. But I
have never heard of any Cloud island volcano!”
“It isn’t a volcano,” Frank went on. “There is never any eruption, never
has been one since the records of that region were opened. Deep down in
the crater are monster caverns, from which lava was tossed years ago,
and at the bottom of some of these are crevices through which the steam
seeps.”
“I’ll get a Russian bath when I get there!” Alex promised himself.
“You’ll get the hide scalded off you, if you go down there!” Jule
advised. “Won’t he, Frank?”
“He will unless he knows where to go,” was the reply. “The steam guards
well the secret of those caverns.
“Any gold there?” asked Case.
“Yes, plenty of it.”
“So that is what they are all after! Well, why don’t they get it?”
“Do they have to dive for it?” asked Case. “The caverns must be full of
water, if they are deep.”
“The water in the crater follows the surface of the river, of course,”
Frank answered. “When there is high water, the current sweeps over the
mouth of the crater, and when there is low water the bottoms of some of
the caverns are dry—the caverns which are shallow in comparison with the
others.”
“I’ve got it now!” roared Alex.
“Smarty!” Jule reproved.
“What is it you’ve got?” asked Case.
“The answer!” was the reply.
“Give it, then!”
“There is plenty of gold in the mountains of Peru,” Alex went on, while
Frank leaned back with a smile on his face. “I have read that there are
solid deposits a mile wide there.” he went on, with a nudge at Jule.
“The mother lode, in fact! Well, the waters carry this gold out of
crevices when it is at its highest and pass it down the river. And some
day the river, at high water, deposited a great quantity of gold in one
of the caverns Frank speaks of, and that gold is what all this mess is
about. Is that right, Frank?”
“Very nearly right!” Frank replied. “Years ago, a very ocean of water
swept down the Andes and rushed through the valley, which is narrow and
rocky. During this period of high water, a great quantity of gold was
washed out of a mine and carried down, and a large amount of what was
swept over Cloud island lodged in the caverns—in one cavern especially,
and there my father found it. It is there still, for he died before he
could bring it out! It is this cavern those people ahead are seeking.”
“And you know right where it is?” asked Jule. “What a snap!”