"But if it's so rough to get into, how can we travel?"
"Oh, often those bad places are not so bad when you get there. I'd like to see the place I couldn't get into if there were diamonds there! We'll get into it somehow, for the diamond-beds must surely be there if they're anywhere. But there's no doubt it'll be a rough trip."
"Rough? What of that?" cried Fred. "If your theory is right we'll make our fortunes—millions, maybe! Of course you'll let me go, won't you? And Maurice, and Mac?"
"I couldn't manage without you. But mind, not a word to anybody else!"
They telephoned the other boys that day, and in the evening a meeting was held in Fred's room, like the previous time when the first expedition had been so hurriedly planned. But this was to be a different affair, carefully thought out and equipped for all sorts of possibilities.
"Of course you'll both be able to go?" said Fred.
"I certainly will," answered Peter. "I've lost so much time this winter already, with our other trip, and then having my mind on the diamonds and dodging newspaper reporters and things, that I've got hopelessly behind. My laboratory work especially has gone all to pieces. I'm bound to fail on next summer's exams, anyway, so I'm going to let it slide and make the trip, on the chance that I'll make such a fortune that I won't have to practice medicine for a living at all. How about you, Maurice?"
"I wouldn't miss it for anything—if I could help it," Maurice replied. "I don't know, though, whether I can afford it."
Maurice's parents were not in rich circumstances, and Horace hastened to say—
"I'm paying for this expedition, you know, out of the diamond money. There'll be plenty, and some to spare."