There was a ring of joy in it, however, that brought hope to the heart of both Tom St. Clair and his winsome wife.
Well, to our two heroes and to Peggy, not to mention Brawn and Burly Bill, the cruise promised to be all one joyous picnic, and they set themselves to make the most of it.
But to Jake Solomons it presented a more serious side. He was St. Clair's representative and trusted man, and his business was of the highest importance, and would need both tact and skill.
However, there was a long time to think about all this, for the river does not run more than three miles an hour, and although the little steamer could hurry the raft along at probably thrice that speed, still long weeks must elapse before they could reach their destination.
As far as the raft was concerned, this would not be Pará. She would be grounded near to a town far higher up stream, and the timber, nuts, spices, and rubber taken seaward by train.
In less than two days everyone had settled down to the voyage.
The river was very wide and getting wider, and soon scarcely could they see the opposite shore, except as a long low green cloud on the northern horizon.
Life on board the raft was for a whole week a most uneventful dreamy sort of existence. One day was remarkably like another. There was the blue of the sky above, the blue on the river's great breast, broken, however, by thousands of lines of rippling silver.
There were strangely beautiful birds flying tack and half-tack around the steamer and raft, waving trees flower-bedraped--the flowers trailing and creeping and climbing everywhere, and even dipping their sweet faces in the water,--flowers of every hue of the rainbow.
Dreamy though the atmosphere was, I would not have you believe that our young folks relapsed into a state of drowsy apathy. Far from it. They were very happy indeed. Dick told Peggy that their life, or his, felt just like some beautiful song-waltz, and that he was altogether so happy and jolly that he had sometimes to turn out in the middle watch to laugh.