“Well, we’ll put in a few more days,” suggested Ned, as they arose from the supper table, “and then I think we’d better get back home, and admit that we’re beaten.”
“I don’t like to give up,” said Jerry.
“Neither do I,” came from the professor. “And yet I think we had better get ready to leave. I don’t like the looks of the weather, and the barometer is falling more rapidly than I care to see it.”
“Do you think a storm is brewing?” asked Bob.
“I do, and a bad one, too. I think we had better stay here one more day, and then move. I’ll have to look in some other place for the rare toad.”
When they went to bed that night there was a low muttering of thunder, and fitful lightning, and Jerry insisted on his chums helping him make the airship more secure by ropes attached to trees.
“We don’t want to be blown away in the night,” he said.
They all slept so soundly that they did not notice the increasing roar of the river, as it rose in flood, due to heavy rains above Snake Island. The river was always roaring, as it tore past the black cliffs, and split in twain at the island, and, though the rain added to this noise, it did not awaken the adventurers.
It was not until early morning that Ned, sitting up in his berth, was conscious of an uneasy, bobbing motion.