“Well, Old Top, we’ve been walkin’ for the last two hours with the moon on our right, and we haven’t got anywhere, have we? You don’t see no lights ahead of us, do you?”
There were no signs of the big cut. The great lights which blazed over the workings were not to be seen. The noises of the digging, the dynamiting, the pounding of the steam shovels, the nervous tooting of the dirt trains, might have been a thousand miles away.
“You’ve got to show me,” Peter said, after studying over the matter for a moment. “That moon isn’t on no stick on a Bowery stage. It is there in the south, where it belongs, and if we continue to keep it on our right we’ll come to the canal in time. We are farther away than we thought for.”
They struggled on through the jungle for another half hour, and then stopped while Jimmie looked reproachfully at the moon.
“I’d like to know what kind of a country this is, anyway,” he grumbled. “I never saw the moon get off on a tear before.”
“Except when you had it on the end of a stick,” said Peter, with a noise which was intended for a laugh, but which sounded more like a sigh of disgust.
“Well, we’ve got to stay here until morning,” Jimmie said, presently, “and I’m so hungry that I could eat a boa constrictor right now.”
“Quit!” cried Peter. “Don’t talk about snakes, or you’ll bring them down on us.”
“That was coarse, wasn’t it?” observed Jimmie. “Well, I’ll withdraw the remark.”
“If we stay here until morning,” Peter said, dubiously, “how do we know the sun won’t rise in the west?”