"I suppose so. The Mission folks and Mrs. Goring know it, don't they? And everybody knows more about this affair than you or I, don't they?"
"I don't know," drawled Little, and without another word he pulled his hat over his eyes, snuggled down, and gave Barry his answer in the shape of a soft, prolonged snore.
The moon sailed overhead and dipped with dimming luster behind a ridge of jungle giants whose upper branches were waking into life. Monkeys and parrots with higher, keener vision than that of the boatmen heralded the gray light breaking low down in the east, and with the swiftness of the moon's coming, dawn turned the black of the river to gray, then to yellow.
But now the yellowness was clear and transparent, different altogether from the muddy foulness of the lower reaches. And the country around lost the density of matted jungle and undulated in a succession of grassy stretches through which cropped great round hummocks of sandy hills. The stream narrowed to a swift running gorge between two such hummocks, then suddenly widened out to five times the width, and the water rippled over sandy shoals that barred further progress in the loaded boat. Barry searched the scene eagerly, bringing the boat to the wind to arrest her way; then suddenly he awoke Little with a shake.
"Come to life, man, we're here!" he said.
Little sat up, rubbing his eyes in confusion at the total change in his surroundings, for he had not opened them once since falling asleep. To be there meant to him that he had arrived among gold dust and romance, and he sought as eagerly as Barry for signs of their arrival. He was disappointed, frankly and utterly.
"Gosh, Barry, this can't be it!" he gasped. "Why, man, where are the red shirts and the faro joints?"
To the eye Houten's gold sands offered little of allure. On both shores the river seemed exactly as other rivers, except for a small cluster of ramshackle grass huts under a clump of dwarf trees and a rough raft of logs tied with grass ropes to a stake set in the bed of the river itself. Of life there was none visible; but as oars rattled in the boat to swing her inshore, a sleepy native emerged from one of the huts, and his swift cry brought a score of his fellows to stare at the intruders.
"Don't look like El Dorado, at that!" grunted Barry, steering inshore and running the boat up on the sand.