"Here we are," he said, presently, "in the valley of the Madeira, with a range of mountains on each side. Below are the rapids and the falls. You must have had a sweet time traveling up from Fort San Antonio. You passed about three hundred miles of swift rapids and falls. How many times did you have to take the Black Bear to pieces?"
"Not once there," was the reply. "We managed to steam up. But, say, we had a lovely time getting up over one waterfall!"
"Well," Ned went on, "here we are at the big bend of the upper
Madeira. We are not far from a thousand miles from the place where
I found Lyman. We can get there by nightfall."
"Not for me," Jack said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "We should have to ride continuously to make it in that time, and I don't like to remain in the air that long. We ought to have five rests of an hour each, and get there in the morning."
"Yes," Ned replied, "I'm getting tired of long rides myself. We'll go slower."
After breakfast the boys went to the Black Bear and looked her over. The propeller which had been broken could easily be repaired, they found, so they left that matter to Harry, replenished the tanks of the Nelson with gasoline, and prepared for the long journey back to the mountains of Peru.
"When are you coming back?" asked Harry, as the three mounted the machine.
"In three days," replied Ned. "And we'll bring Jimmie with us."
"If they haven't fed him to the mountain lions before now!" Harry said, with a strange premonition of evil in his heart.
And the Nelson was up and away, and Harry set to work cleaning up the motor boat, hoping to forget in toil how lonely and apprehensive he was.