Case blushed, as if ashamed of his outburst so soon after having resolved to mend his ways, and moved toward the back of the cabin.
“I don’t know just where Jule put the money last time we counted it,” he said, making a great show of looking for it, “but I presume it is here somewhere.”
In fumbling around next to the rear wall the boy came upon a roll of drawings, which he brought out and tossed on the table, his quest of the hidden money momentarily forgotten.
“Here’s the map of the Amazon, boys,” he said, unrolling the paper. “I brought it in to-night. As we leave to-morrow, we may as well run over it now. Here’s where we strike the Brazilian coast, at Para, and here’s where we camp on the Amazon, away up near the foothills of the Eastern Andes. I guess Jule will get well up there!”
“Of course he will!” Clay asserted. “Didn’t Dr. Holcomb say so? I guess he knows.”
“He’s a brick, that Dr. Holcomb!” Alex declared. “Only for him we wouldn’t be so near the roof of the world as we are now.”
“I don’t see any roof of any world!” observed Case, obstinately.
“You will if you stick with us,” Alex continued. “The mountains and tablelands of South America, along there by Peru, you know, are often called the roof of the world. When you get up to the top of some of the mountains, you can’t get any higher in this world, without going up in an aeroplane, and then you wouldn’t be in the world at all, but out of it and above it.”
“Well, we aren’t very near it yet,” Case replied.
“But we will be nearer it, physically, to-morrow night at this time,” Alex kept on. “Think of it! Through the drainage canal like an arrow in this good little motor boat, down the Mississippi with a rush, into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea and out again, and then along the coast to the mouth of the Amazon! Say, boys, do you know that the Amazon has a mouth a hundred and fifty miles wide?”