Ned looked anxious.
“Here, I say, Griggs,” he said. “No games. We want a bathe horribly. You don’t think there really are any biting things in the water, do you?”
“I dunno, my lad. This is a new place altogether to me. There are plenty of vicious hungry things down in Mississippi and Florida, I know that.”
“But we’re not in Mississippi nor yet in Florida,” cried Chris. “I say, Griggy, where are we?”
“Why, here, to be sure,” replied the American.
“Don’t talk stuff!” cried Chris angrily. “What part are we in?”
“I’m not a geography-book, my lad, and I don’t know where we are, only that we’ve travelled south-west. No finger-posts up here and no lines to show where the States are divided.”
“Now you’re bantering again, Griggs,” cried Chris irritably. “You must know.”
“If you come to that, why, so must you, my lad. But I really don’t know, only that we’re well into the wild unsettled parts of the country, and I should say nobody had ever been here before but prospectors—chaps like the poor fellow who came crawling to us regularly done up.”
“But where should you think we are?”