“We’ll rest at the hotel here,” said Mr. Jukes, “till it grows cooler. My dyspepsia is bad again. It comes from traveling during the heat of the day as we have been doing.”
The mid-day meal was cooked on a sort of altar built of stones. The boys watched the operations in this open-air kitchen with interest. At least twenty natives assisted in the culinary demonstration and the chatter and laughter was deafening. They made a hearty meal on the native fare, which they were astonished to find was quite as good as anything they had tasted at home.
As Mr. Jukes did not wish to go forward at once after the meal they took it easy in several grass hammocks stretched under a large, shady, tree. The fact that the natives kept coming up and peering into their faces and that babies, chickens and pigs wandered about under the hammocks did not disturb the boys after a while, and they dropped off to sleep.
“I don’t wonder the natives here are lazy,” remarked Jack, when Muldoon awakened him with a yell of “All hands on deck to see it rain.” “I rarely slept in the day-time, but here I just dozed off without knowing it.”
“Same here,” chimed in Raynor. “I didn’t have to even half try.”
“This climate is very enervating, boys,” declared Captain Sparhawk, joining in the conversation. “That is why this part of the globe makes so little progress toward civilisation. Men who are hustlers in their own country come here determined to make the dirt fly, but after a few months their energy oozes out of them like—well, say like tar out of the seams of a hot ship’s deck.”
“That’s a good comparison,” laughed Jack.
Once more everything was stirring in the adventurers’ camp, and soon they were on their way again. The Frenchman, whose “hotel” they had left, had told them that by evening they would reach another village, the last one they would encounter before plunging into the really wild jungle, where there was another “hotel.”
“As it will be our last chance for many days to sleep under a roof, I propose we stay there to-night,” said Mr. Jukes, swallowing a pill.
This suited the rest of the party and they struck forward at a brisk pace after their refreshing rest and sleep. The jungle was filled with countless birds, but there were no feathered songsters among them. The air was filled with nothing but discordant shrieks and cries that set the teeth on edge. Once the boys had the thrill of seeing a bird of paradise, with its glorious plumage and wonderful tail feathers, flash across their path.