“How did you come to know that?” asked Will. “I thought Ed was the geographer of this expedition.”
“So he is. But I’m captain, worse luck to it, and it’s my first business to know what lies ahead. So I looked this thing up on the map. The Yalobusha and Tallahatchie run together somewhere near a village called Greenwood, which is probably a hundred feet or so under water just now,—we may even float over the highest steeple in that interesting town, when we get to it,—and those two streams form the Yazoo. By the way, that little side issue of a river happens to be considerably longer, in its navigable part, than one of the most celebrated rivers in the world—the Hudson.”
“You don’t mean it?” exclaimed Irv, for once surprised out of his drawl.
“Maybe I don’t. But I think I do. Ask Ed to study it out. I’m too tired to talk. I’m going to sleep for ten minutes now. Wake me up at the end of that time. Don’t fail!”
With that the exhausted boy rolled into a bunk, and in an instant was asleep again.
Ed got out his maps and studied them for a while.
“He’s right, boys,” said the older one, after some measurements on the map.
“Of course he is,” said Constant. “He’s got into the habit of being right since we chose him to be ‘It’ for this trip. But go on, Ed. Tell us about it.”