"Masie Langford is too nice a girl to be living in these wilds," said he after a pause. "But, pshaw! I suppose that is the last we shall ever see of her."
The next morning the party once more set out on their journey up the river.
Jack Howard was on the lookout for the boat of Langford, the hunter, but as that had gone down the river at the breaking of day, he did not get an opportunity to see the girl he had become suddenly interested in.
And so they kept on for five days, finding traces of Doc Clancy on the banks of the river almost every night.
They had now reached a branch of the river which pointed northeast toward the very heart of the unknown interior.
It did not take them long to find that Clancy had gone that way, as traces of camp fires could be found on the bank.
"I was sure they would go this way," said Jack Howard. "Clancy's companions know the course we had mapped out, and they think we are in search of some vast treasure; and, consequently, they want to get there ahead of us."
The further our friends proceeded up the now narrow stream, the more dangers they were forced to encounter.
Crocodiles were now as thick as the hair on the back of a dog, and they were careful not to run the boat against any of the ferocious creatures.
The climate at this point was very bad. It was so hot during the day that none of our friends dared trust themselves in the sun over ten minutes at a time; and at night a heavy, poisonous dew would fall, the fumes of which threatened to give all hands the fever.