“Good old Captain Joe!” Jule exclaimed. “How did he know?”
“Oh, anyone would know that such a fool as I am—such a heedless fool—would get any company he traveled with into trouble, and——”
Alex clapped a hand over the speaker’s mouth.
“That will be all for you,” he said.
CHAPTER XVII.—NIGHTS ON THE AMAZON
Neither then nor at any other time was Clay permitted to speak to his chums of the loss of the gold. He was allowed, briefly, to explain that two men who claimed to be interested in motor boats had approached him as he re-entered the restaurant, that he had invited them to seats at the table, where he had ordered another cup of coffee—the quality served before having been excellent—that he had felt drowsy after drinking one cup, and that the next he knew the boys were pulling him to his feet. That was all.
There was no doubt in the minds of the boys that the coffee had been drugged in the kitchen before being brought to the table, or that the two men were confederates of the restaurant keeper; but they were in no position to demand investigation in a hostile country, and so resolved to continue their journey up the Amazon and say nothing more about it. There were even suspicions in the minds of Clay and Case that the whole thing had been planned by Frank’s old enemies to keep the Rambler tied up in the harbor for a long time, as well as to acquire the gold the boy had so freely shown.
“The people who are trying to keep Frank away from that strange and mysterious Cloud island are at the bottom of it,” was Case’s final comment on the incident.
However, the boys were now well supplied with gasoline and provisions, and there would be no further need of stopping at any town for a long time. Frank seemed to have lost his desire for great speed, after leaving the Madeira, and so the Rambler lolled along the river for all the world like a boat out with a summer-day picnic party.
Now and then the boy watched the down-stream country with a glass, as if expecting to see a steamer with green and yellow stripes on her stack shooting swiftly against the current. Again, he sat for hours on the little stern platform at night, watching the river and the shores for a light which he never discovered.