It was a lovely morning when Wandering Will sorrowfully bade his friends farewell, and, with his faithful followers, turned his face towards the snow-capped range of the mighty Andes.
Chapter Eleven.
Wandering Will travels, finds his Profession Profitable, and sees a Good Deal of Life in New Forms.
The first part of the journey was performed in a canoe on the Tacames river, up which they ascended with considerable speed. The scenery was delightfully varied. In some places the stream was wide, in others very narrow, fringed along the banks with the most luxuriant timber and brushwood, in which the concert kept up by birds and beasts was constant but not disagreeable to the ears of such enthusiastic sportsmen as Will Osten, Larry O’Hale, and Bunco. The only disagreeable objects in the landscape were the alligators, which hideously ugly creatures were seen, covered with mud, crawling along the banks and over slimy places, with a sluggish motion of their bodies and an antediluvian sort of glare in their eyes that was peculiarly disgusting. They were found to be comparatively harmless, however. If they had chanced to catch a man asleep they would have seized him no doubt, and dragged him into the water, but being arrant cowards, they had not the pluck to face even a little boy when he was in motion.
Towards the afternoon of the first day, the hunters came to a long bend in the river. Here Will Osten resolved to leave Bunco to proceed alone with the canoe, while he and Larry crossed the country in search of game. Their friend Gordon had given them an elaborate chart of the route up to the mountains, so that they knew there was a narrow neck of jungle over which they might pass and meet the canoe after it had traversed the bend in the river.
“Have you got the tinder-box, Larry?” inquired Will, as they were about to start.
“Ay, an’ the powder an’ shot too, not to mintion the bowie-knife. Bad luck to the wild baists as comes to close quarters wid me, anyhow.”
He displayed an enormous and glittering knife as he spoke, with which he made two or three savage cuts and thrusts at imaginary tigers before returning it to its sheath.