“Perhaps he was thinking of getting the diamonds or the money away from us,” suggested Jule. “He’d have a good time doing it!”
“Oh, I guess not,” Clay replied, but he was not quite easy in his mind until the young man—a dark young man in a greenish suit, with little black eyes and a tiny mustache, turned up at the ends, left the car at the bridge.
The gasoline was on board long before noon, Captain Joe having seen to that personally, and then all was bustle as the boys headed down the drainage canal for the Mississippi. The last familiar figure they saw as they got under way, the motors ticking merrily under the hatch on the deck floor, was that of Captain Joe, standing on the pier and waving a white handkerchief from a pudgy hand.
The boys were delighted with the trip down to the Gulf of Mexico, and agreed that if they could ever afford it they would some day take a leisurely journey down the Mississippi in the motor boat.
The Rambler passed through the Caribbean sea without mishap, though the boys were more than once reminded of the advice of Captain Joe, to “keep her head on.” It was rather more difficult navigating the eastern coast, but there were no serious accidents, and Jule gained in health every minute. On the way down Frank, now a welcome member of the party, gave the boys lessons in Spanish, and many a friendly tilt they had over their pronunciation of the tongue spoken principally in South America.
One evening in early June the lights of Para gladdened the eyes of the boys, for there, away to the north, ran the current of the mighty Amazon!
CHAPTER VII.—A BOAT FROM THE SOUTH BRANCH
The boys had headed the Rambler for Para, which is some distance south of the mouth of the Amazon, for two reasons. The first was that supplies could be purchased there cheaper than at the towns in the interior of Brazil, as the city is the principal commercial port of that country. They had put in a good supply of gasoline at New Orleans, but there was not near enough in the tanks to attempt the navigation of the long stretch of water ahead of them. Besides, their supply of provisions was running short.
There are several cities of good size along the Amazon and her tributaries, but excessive freight rates would make purchases there too expensive for the lessening supply of ready money. Trading vessels from all parts of the world make a highway of the Amazon, cargoes being put off and taken on more than two thousand miles from the Atlantic coast. In fact, navigation of the river and its branches ends only at the gorges of the eastern Andes.
Para is a modern city in many ways, and boasts a population of something over a quarter of a million. It is sixty-five miles from the coast, on a river of the same name, three thousand from New York, and three thousand from Buenos Aires. The river there is something like twenty feet in depth, but so sloping are the shores that most of the loading and unloading is done with the aid of lighters.