CHAPTER XVII.—NIGHTS ON THE AMAZON
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.