Captain Joe, the dog, worthy representative of a staunch old friend, put his chin on Alex’s knee, at mention of his name, and wagged his tail as if promising to unravel the whole mystery as soon as he got time!
“I wish someone would offer a reward now that we could get,” Jule grinned. “I think we could use a little old reward about now. Anyway, I don’t see where all our $200 and the $500 reward went to. We must have been tossing money to the birds!”
Clay and Alex looked at each other with glances of understanding. Jule had never been told of the loss of the money.
“Funny about that reward coming just at the time it did, and just as it did,” began Alex, but here a great chattering in the jungle cut the conversation short. There was such a rustling in the foliage, now invisible in the blackness of the night, and such a medley of whisperings and shrill cries that the boys involuntarily reached for their weapons. Then Jule laughed and turned on the prow light, for they had been sitting in the darkness.
“You’ll see ’em in a second,” he told the others, winking the light on and off to attract more attention. “There’s a brigade of Brazilian monkeys in there, and the boys have stirred them up with their lights and noise.”
“I doubt if we’ll get a look at them,” Clay corrected, “for the Brazilian monkeys are shy little chaps. Even Captain Joe seems to understand that they will not be at home to callers to-night,” he added, as the dog wagged his tail and lay down again.
As the two explorers in the forest passed farther from the creek the protests of the monkeys died out, and all was reasonably still again. Clay moved over by the light switch so that Jule could not turn it on again, as he considered it safer to sit in the darkness. The bright prow light made too good a mark for a hostile gun, he thought.
While Clay, Alex, and Jule waited on the forward deck of the Rambler, still discussing the incomprehensible actions and silences of Frank, that young man, accompanied by Case, was plunging through the thickets lying south of Ruination Creek. Back of them rolled the Amazon, only a short distance away. To the east lay the Madeira, to the west the level plain ending only at the Andes.
They had proceeded perhaps half a mile when Frank stopped in a little opening and looked about with expectant eyes. The noises of the forest were all about them. Birds, suddenly awakened from sleep, cried out to each other from treetops, and hidden things scurried along under the dense foliage which everywhere concealed the rich black earth.
“It was right here somewhere,” Frank said, “that I found the tree hotel, and it is right about here that we’ll get the cargo if we get it at all. Do you smell anything unusual?” he added, sniffing the air.