Beeboo would be dressed betimes, and have the cloth laid in the saloon. The great raft rose and fell with a gentle motion, but there was nothing to hurt, so that the dishes stuck on the cloth without any guard.
Beeboo could bake the most delicious of scones and cakes, and these, served up hot in a clean white towel, were most tempting; the butter was of the best and sweetest. Ham there was, and eggs of the gull, with fresh fried fish every morning, and fragrant coffee.
Was it not quite idyllic?
The forenoon would be spent on deck under the awning; there was plenty to talk about, and books to read, and there was the ever-varying panorama to gaze upon, as the raft went smoothly gliding on, and on, and on.
Sometimes they were in very deep water close to the bank, for men were always in the chains taking soundings from the steamer's bows.
Close enough to admire the flowers that draped the forest trees; close enough to hear the wild lilt of birds or the chattering of monkeys and parrots; close enough to see tapirs moving among the trees, watched, often enough, by the fierce sly eyes of ghastly alligators, that flattened themselves against rocks or bits of clay soil, looking like a portion of the ground, but warily waiting until they should see a chance to attack.
There cannot be too many tapirs, and there cannot be too few alligators. So our young heroes thought it no crime to shoot these squalid horrors wherever seen.
But one forenoon clouds banked rapidly up in the southern sky, and soon the sun was hidden in sulphurous rolling banks of cumulus.
No one who has ever witnessed a thunderstorm in these regions can live long enough to forget it.
For some time before it came on the wind had gone down completely. In yonder great forest there could not have been breeze or breath enough to stir the pollen on the trailing flowers. The sun, too, seemed shorn of its beams, the sky was no longer blue, but of a pale saffron or sulphur colour.