"So will mine," Frank said, then. "I'll tell him I'll send him a lot of news for his paper."
Frank's father was owner and editor of the Planet, one of the leading morning newspapers in the big city, and it was always a fiction of the boy's that he was going out in the interest of the paper when he wandered off on a trip with the Boy Scouts.
"I'm afraid you can't make that work again," laughed Jack. "Ned says that you sent only four postal cards and six letters back from Panama."
"Well, wasn't that going some?" asked Frank.
"Of course, only Ned says the postal cards carried the correspondence for the Planet, and the letters carried requests for more money!"
"Anyway," Frank insisted, "Dad will stand for it. What is it?"
"Well," Jack went on, "I'm sure my Dad will let me go. He wants me to go about all I can. Says it brightens a fellow to rub up against the rough places of the world."
"There's rough corners enough in South America," laughed Harry.
"Now, let us get down to figures," Jack continued. "We ought to be able to get to the mouth of the Amazon on a fast boat, with the Black Bear and the Wolf on board, in a week or ten days-say ten days. About that time they will be getting into Paraguay. What do you think of it?"
"Fine!" cried Harry.