CHAPTER IX.—AN ALARM IN THE NIGHT
“Now you’ve gone and got us into another row!” grumbled Case, panting from his long pull at the oars. “You’ve stirred up the whole city, I guess,” he continued, as an addition to the mob on the pier swung around a corner.
“Well, I had to bring the dog, didn’t I?” demanded Alex, with a most annoying smile. “He’s my dog. I’ve named him Captain Joe, for the good old sea captain!”
“It strikes me you’d better get the Rambler out a little farther,” suggested Jule. “Those muckers on shore are getting a boat.”
This seemed to be sound advice, for three boats instead of one were being started away from the pier. Clay set the motors going at full speed and headed for the other side of the river. At the same moment the Señorita shipped anchor and headed shoreward, with the evident purpose of picking up the approaching boats.
“Let her out!” advised Alex, patting the wet dog on the head. “If they catch us, with the help of that steamer they’ll want my dog.”
“Where did you get the pup?” asked Jule, trying to make friends with Captain Joe, a heavy, ugly, red-eyed, white bulldog about a year old.
“Bought him,” replied Alex, “and then they tried to steal him away from me. You’d better get a move on, Clay!”
The Rambler was now headed up the river at her best speed, and the Señorita soon dropped back. As she turned to take up her old position Captain Joe, who seemed to understand that he was now a dog of great importance, put his paws upon the railing and barked an insulting farewell to her and the members of the mob she was taking on board.
“That’s a fine dog,” said Jule.
“You bet he is!” asserted Alex. “I saw him doing tricks up in town and bought him of a boy, and then an old man came along and claimed him, and I bought the dog of him, and then another man came along and said the dog was his, and I bought him again, and then another man came along and said the dog was his, and I bought him again, and then another man came——”
“To be continued in our next!” shouted Jule. “Serves you good and right for going off without me. Now, tell us what took place.”
“Why,” Alex went on, making a wry face at the Señorita as the Rambler shot around a point of land and was slowed down a trifle, “I’m telling you about it. I bought Captain Joe off a boy, and a man came along and claimed him, and I bought him off him, and then another man came along and claimed the dog, and I bought him——”
Jule chased Alex and his dog into the cabin and left them there to recover from the effects of their bath.
“That lad certainly needs a mental tonic!” he exclaimed, as he went on deck again.
“I don’t doubt that he is telling the exact truth, in his whimsical way, of course,” Frank argued, in defense of his friend. “That is an old trick in this country. You buy something of one man and another claims it. Alex would have been buying that dog yet if he had remained on shore. He just had to run for it or lose the dog.”
“He needs a dog about as much as I need a cupola on top of my head,” Case put in.
“I don’t see how we’ve got along without a dog as long as we have,” grinned Jule.
“What sort of a river is this Para stream?” asked Case, as the Rambler pressed on through what seemed to be a lake anywhere from ten to fifteen miles in width, with a row of long islands hugging the south shore.
“No river at all,” Frank replied. “It is merely an estuary, as you will see when the Atlantic tide meets the current coming down from the west. And the river that runs into this estuary isn’t the Para at all. It is the Tocantins, a stream a thousand miles long. Why this body of water is put down on the maps as the Para river is more than I can say.”
About dark, after a run of sixty or seventy miles, the boys came to the island which sits at the mouth of the Tocantins river. At nine in the evening they anchored in front of Cameta, which is a small town on the west side of the Tocantins. Here they decided to spend the night.
“It seems like we were never going to get to the Amazon,” Jule complained, as the lights of the town vanished for the night.
“We are still at least two hundred miles from the Amazon,” Frank replied. “Across there, to the North, is Marajo island. We will sail along on this side of it all day to-morrow, probably, on an estuary fully as wide as that we have been following. Then we will come to a region of bayous from 50 to 100 yards in width. There are trees two hundred feet high in there, and the forest is so thick with tangled vines that one can scarcely get through it. Then we will come out on the Amazon, not far from Gurupa, a place of some importance. Then, after we pass the mouth of the Xingu river, we will be fairly on our way to the foot of the Andes.”
“Well, hurry up!” broke in Alex, snapping his fingers at Captain Joe, “this honorable puppy wants to get his paws into the earth again.”
For two days the boys sat under an awning which had been spread over the hot forward deck and feasted their city-bred eyes on the luxuriance of the tropical forest. It was all new and strange to them. In some places the boughs of the great trees met over their heads, making a green bower of the bayou through which they were passing.
Now and then a native Indian glided past them in a canoe made of some light wood. These natives are dark as negroes, but their hair is long and straight. They are not at all warlike.
The night before reaching the Amazon the boys tied up in a bayou and put all lights out early.
“If the Señorita is sneaking along after us,” Clay said, “we must know it. This is as good a place to fight it out as any other.”
“They will never fight it out in the open,” Frank declared, moodily. “They will wait for a chance to blow us out of water, or to knife us from behind.”
The Rambler was dark and still at midnight, and Alex was on watch, on the forward deck with Captain Joe sniffing the heavy air at his side.
“What do you see, old boy?” asked Alex, as the dog ran, whining, toward the prow.
Captain Joe lowered his ugly-looking muzzle and appeared to be looking down into the water. Alex groped about in the darkness for an instant and then called Clay, speaking very softly, “so as not to queer the act that is coming on,” he explained.
“What is it?” whispered Clay, as the two crouched in the prow, looking into the dark bayou.
“Watch the dog,” advised Alex.
Captain Joe appeared to be quivering from nose to the tip end of his stumpy tail. His ears were lifted as Alex patted his head, and his teeth snapped between snarling lips. He whined softly as Alex restrained him from jumping into the dark water.
“There’s an Indian about,” Alex whispered. “I bought him of an up-river Indian he seemed afraid of, and every time we’ve passed one he’s acted like this. Seems as if the Indian he’s scenting is in the water—probably swimming toward the boat.”
While the two stood there in silence, listening for some ripple of water to give them the location of the prowler, the quick, sharp ring of a steamer’s exhaust came to their ears. They listened for what seemed to them to be a long time, but the sounds came no nearer.
“That’s the Señorita,” Clay commented, “and she is undoubtedly waiting back there in some bay for a report from the mucker who has been sent on ahead to see what the prospects for a midnight murder are.”
Captain Joe was growing more uneasy every minute, and Alex was having a hard time holding him. His sharp claws were making too much noise on the deck, and the boy tried to throw him over on his side.
“Lie still!” he commanded, but Captain Joe had other notions of what was best to do under the circumstances. He wiggled away from the boy’s hands in the dark and sprang into the water.
“Now you’ve done it!” gritted Alex. “Wait until I get you back on the boat!”
There was now a great splashing in the water, terminating in a shriek of terror and pain, and Clay turned his searchlight on the scene of the disturbance. Two heads were seen bobbing about in the water, one of an Indian, the other of the dog.
“Get him, Captain Joe!” cried Alex, overlooking all caution in the excitement of the moment.
There was a plunge and a cry and both heads disappeared. Directly the flashlight showed the dog’s head on the surface, swimming toward the boat. The Indian was nowhere in sight.
“He dove under and got away from the puppy,” Alex explained, as he leaned far over the side of the boat to assist Captain Joe on deck. “Did you lose him, old boy?” he asked patting the dog on the head.
“I’m afraid not,” Clay observed, turning his light on the dog and disclosing bloody water dropping away from the jaws.
Alex bent over his pet and saw a long knife wound on the shoulder.
“They sure got together in the water,” he said. “I guess that is a good Indian now!”
“It is a terrible thing to take a human life,” Clay said. “I hope the poor fellow got away.”
“So he can come back some other night when we’re not watching!” cried Alex. “If he hadn’t been trying to get us he wouldn’t have been here, and wouldn’t have been hurt.”
Captain Joe moved back to the cabin and lay down to lick his hurt.
“You’ll have to keep him chained,” Clay suggested, with a smile at the interested face of the boy.
“Huh!” cried Alex. “You keep your old Indians chained!”
There was another long silence. The flashlights were off, and the dog lay asleep at the cabin door. Then the puff-puff of a steamer was in the air, and the sound of churning water. As the boys listened the sounds grew fainter.
“They’ve gone back,” Alex ventured. “They’ve given up all hope of getting us to-night. I wonder why they are after Frank, and why he is so close-mouthed about the matter?”
“Whatever the difficulty is,” Clay said, “there is likely to be more incidents like this before we get back to the South Branch.”
“Are you going to stop at Gurupa?” asked Alex, disappointed at the reticence of the other.
“We must have more gasoline,” was the reply.
“Why, we filled the tanks at Para!”
“Just so, but one of the tanks sprung a leak, and we’ve got just about half enough for our needs.”
Alex gave a low whistle of amazement.
“And we’ve got too little money to let it run out of the tanks without getting us anywhere,” he said.
“When we fill the tanks,” Clay said, dejectedly, “we’ll be just about out of money.”
Another long whistle from Alex.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“Just keep on going.”
“But we can’t run without gasoline.”
“We’ll have to take in some sort of a cargo and trade along the river,” suggested Clay. “We may be able to get through in that way.”
“It will be fun!” exclaimed Alex.
“We might sell Captain Joe,” hinted Clay, with a laugh, “if we could find anyone to buy him.”
“I guess not!” exclaimed Alex, indignantly. “If it hadn’t been for Captain Joe we might all have been murdered in our beds!” No, sir; we’ll starve before we’ll sell Captain Joe!”
Clay chuckled, respecting the boy’s loyalty to the dog, and nothing more was said on the subject.
The remainder of the night passed without incident, except that the occasional exhaust of steam told the boys that the Señorita, or some other meddlesome craft, was lying in the darkness to the south. In the morning, however, there were no signs of the pursuing boat.
Shortly before noon the next day the Rambler passed out of the narrow bayou she had been following and speeded out on the Amazon, the river of their dreams! It is needless to say that the boys opened their eyes wide at sight of the famous stream, which is dotted with islands at that point, looking more like a lake than a river. It is so wide that the shores are only dimly seen from the center of the current.
In the afternoon they reached the little harbor where they were to buy gasoline. When, after some haggling and unnecessary delay, the motors were started again, Clay looked very sober.
“We’re broke,” he announced. “If we get any more gasoline we’ve got to earn it, in some way.”
To the credit of the boys be it said that they received the announcement with due gravity, but refused to be much depressed by it. They declared that they could earn more money, never stopping to think that they were in South America and not in Chicago!
Straight to the west the mighty river lay, stretching to the blue skyline. They passed the Trombetas on the third day, and towards night came to the Madeira, into which Frank, who was at the wheel, directed the prow of the Rambler.
“Where might you be going, Frank?” Jule asked as, after half an hour, the boy turned the Rambler into a little creek perhaps five miles away from the mouth of the Madeira. “Which of the big streams that met back a ways is the Amazon?”
“This is the Madeira,” Frank replied. “It is not as long as the Amazon, but it is some river for all that. I don’t know that this creek has any name, but that won’t prevent us tying up for the night here. I’ve a sort of affection for this place. You see, boys,” he added, a grim smile on his face, “I stopped here on the way down from Peru. I wasn’t exactly looking for sport here, either! While here at that time, I saw something that caused me to think we might pick up a cargo here now—something we can turn into gasoline and such tinned goods as we need. From now on, of course, we can get most of our food from the river and forest, as fish and game are plenty. I’ll show you our dessert, directly.”
The Rambler was soon anchored for the night in the creek, but the boys did not build a “cook” fire on shore, as the wild tangle of undergrowth came down to the edge of the creek. While Case was frying bacon and eggs and making coffee, Frank went ashore in the row-boat, “after dessert,” he said, the motor boat having been anchored at least thirty feet from the bank. When he returned he carried an armful of green, tough-looking things, each weighing not far from two pounds. He passed one to each of his chums and sat grinning as they made cautious examinations and asked questions about the “fruit.”
“They are custard apples,” he said, after the boys had guessed for a time. “The natives call ’em chirimoya. Some of them weigh ten pounds. See, it is a pie, already made,” he added, breaking open one of the “apples.”
Inside was a delicious soft pulp, thickly sown with black seeds. It reminded the boys of the Indiana pawpaw. Jule said it was a banana, pine-apple, pear and strawberry all in one. Several were consumed that night and more collected for the next day.
“Besides these,” Frank said, opening a second “apple pie,” as he called it, “we’ll find something worth while here.”