The drive was made in an aged hack, and hardly had the boys left the outskirts of the town before they were exclaiming over the luxuriant tropical vegetation and the odd sights that met their eyes on every side. Once or twice they crossed small streams, and laughed at the sight of native women pounding clothes on rocks at the water side with big, flat clubs.
“Heaven help the buttons!” cried Merritt. “This must be a paradise for button manufacturers.”
“I guess they don’t bother much with them, at least not the natives that we’ve passed,” chuckled Fred.
“Oh, look at that bunch of bananas!” cried Tubby presently, as they passed by a clump of green banana plants laden with fruit. “Let’s hop out and get some.”
But the fruit was green and uneatable. Bananas, as Tubby did not know, are picked and shipped while green, and grow yellow and ripe on the voyage north in the holds of the fruit steamers, which are kept carefully at a uniform temperature.
“It’s odd that we’ve seen nothing of Jared or his friends,” remarked Rob, as, after the discovery of Tubby’s mistake, they drove on again. “Has your dad notified the police?”
“Yes, indeed,” rejoined Fred Mainwaring, “but nothing has come of it as yet. Of course, a careful lookout is being kept. Say, fellows,” he exclaimed in a cautious tone, “do you know I believe that some plot is on foot to injure the great Gatun Dam and delay the opening of the canal? At least, I’m pretty sure, from things I’ve heard dad say, that such is the case.”
“And you think, or rather he thinks, that Jared is mixed up in it?” asked Tubby breathlessly.
“That’s what. At least he is mixed up in it to this extent, that he is supplying the plotters with plans of the dam and so on in order that they can strike their blow at the weakest part of it.”
“Gee whiz! I’d like to get my hands on that Jared just once,” exclaimed Merritt angrily. “What a skunk he is.”