“Are there two legs?” exclaimed Jack, instantly. “Oh! where are they? I have never seen such a leg, and it will add to my fund of education.”
Polly and Eleanor laughed at the play of words, but Nancy felt too mature to laugh at such a childish joke. She said rather jeeringly: “Poor Jack! ‘A fool always laughs at his own wit.’ Are you not aware that ‘leg’ is a nautical term?”
Jack’s chair-legs came down hard upon the floor, and he sat bolt upright as he showed a livelier interest in this sparring match. “Hoh! I may not be versed in nautical names, but at least I am not guilty of having read the type from every one of Dalky’s tomes on South America. I know of certain young ladies who pride themselves on their geography, especially when touring South of the Equator, who lugged those same tomes from the shelves in Dalky’s library and now shamelessly preen their feathers of knowledge.”
“Children, if you can’t keep quiet and let Mr. Dalken tell us of the proposed trip, you’ll have to go to bed!” declared Mrs. Courtney, frowning at Jack and the girls.
“Or we can take our plans and go out on deck where we need not be annoyed by infants’ prattle,” added Mr. Fabian.
“No, NO! Please don’t do that,” cried Polly, anxiously. “We’ll make Jack keep quiet, if we have to gag him!”
“Now see that you keep your word, Poll,” advised Mrs. Courtney, shaking a finger at the irrepressible Jack.
“Then I’ll continue,” added Mr. Dalken. “The first port of any size shown on my map is Buenventura, in Colombia. Since stopping at Colon, I’ve heard so much about Colombia and its mediaeval customs and peoples of the interior, that I half wish we had arranged to land at Barranquilla, which is on the coast of the Caribbean Sea; thence we could have taken passage on one of the wood-burning river boats that poke along the length of the Magdalena River as far as Bogota. From that place we would have crossed the Andes via mule-train and arrived at Buenventura to take the yacht from there on down the coast. However, we may be able to come back by that route—that is, providing the females and Jack are sufficiently hardened to mountain-life by the time we have finished the Amazon River.”
Everyone laughed at Jack’s disgusted expression at being classed with the “females” of the party, and Mr. Dalken hastily continued his harangue lest his ward begin to interrupt again.
“I have been advised to keep away from hotels in the different small towns at which we might stop to see the sights. They are miserable and charge exorbitant rates to tourists. Also, those ports near the Equator are insufferably hot and with no modern accommodation, such as electric fans, fly-screens, or other conveniences. Luckily we have our hotel with us, and we can always secure rooms on board the yacht, no matter what undesirable conditions there may be for others not so fortunate.