“We might make a rope of creepers,” Bob suggested, at length, as, after a survey of their resources, the three stood on the raft, gazing wryly at each other.
“Dad has several big coils of rope with him,” said Jack. “If we could only get in touch with him and tell him to cross the river up above and come down on the right bank.”
Bob looked at his watch. “More than three hours since we started our runaway journey,” he commented. “Great Scott, I hadn’t realized how long we’d been on the way. Why, we must have been carried fifteen miles downstream.”
“All of that,” said Jack. “And Dad will have a hard time making his way through the underbrush and jungle growth along that marshy river bank on his side of the stream. He’ll keep hunting till he finds us. But we can hardly look for him to put in an appearance today. Well, thank goodness, we not only saved ourselves but the raft and its supplies, too. That’s something. And we’ll find a way out of this all right.”
Frank who, although the smallest of the three suffered most from the heat oppression, had remained silent, sitting on a box and fanning his flushed face with his sun helmet. Now he leaped to his feet, and his eyes lost the drowsy look induced by the heat and sparkled with animation.
“Jack, if we’ve been gone more than three hours, it’s dollars to doughnuts that we can get in touch with your father.”
“You mean—”
“Radio. No less,” answered Frank, triumphantly. Then he proceeded to elaborate.
“Your father, as you say, cannot have pushed his way very far through that jungle growth in three short hours. He knows that whether the blacks swam for it or not, we would stick to the raft as long as there remained a chance to save it. So he will figure either that we have reached shore somewhere below him with the raft or else that we are still being carried downstream. After he has forced his way through the jungle a mile or two, what is he most likely to do? Why, to set up the radio and start calling for us on the chance that we are doing likewise. Doesn’t that seem probable.”
“Probable or not,” said Bob, beginning at once to poke about amongst the contents of the raft in search of the box containing the spare transmitting set; “at least putting up the radio will give us something to do.”