“So’m I,” Jimmie replied, “and I’ll tell you what we’ll do! When we start away we’ll swipe blankets off the bed. I guess they’ll keep us warm.”
“Well, we’ll have to keep Glenn and Ben from knowing anything about the old trip,” Carl suggested. “Of course they couldn’t prevent us going, but they’d put up a kick that would make it unpleasant.”
“Indeed they would!” answered Jimmie. “But, at the same time, they’d go themselves if they’d got hold of the idea first. I suggested it, you know, and that’s one reason why they would reject it.”
Arrived at the hotel, Jimmie and Carl had no difficulty in getting a double room, although their chums looked rather suspiciously at them as they all entered the elevator.
“Now,” said Ben, “don’t you boys get into any mischief to-night. Quito isn’t a town for foreigners to explore during the dark hours!”
“I’m too sleepy to think of any midnight adventures!” cried Jimmie with a wink and a yawn.
“Me, too!” declared Carl. “I’ll be asleep in about two minutes!”
It was about ten o’clock when the boys found themselves alone in a large room which faced one of the leading thoroughfares of the capital city. Quito is well lighted by electricity, and nearly all the conveniences of a city of the same size in the United States are there to be had.
The street below the room occupied by the two boys was brilliantly lighted until midnight, and the lads sat at a window looking out on the strange and to them unusual scene. When the lights which flashed from business signs and private offices were extinguished, the thoroughfare grew darker, and then the boys began seriously to plan their proposed excursion.
“What we want to do,” Jimmie suggested, “is to get out of the hotel without being discovered and make our way to a back street where a cab can be ordered. It is a mile to the field where the machines were left, and we don’t want to lose any time.”