CHAPTER XI
PROVISIONED FOR A LONG JOURNEY
Ten days after his discovery there in the abandoned cabin, Johnny Thompson was ready to travel. He was ready to embark in the dugout of his new found friends.
“It will not be long,” he assured Jean, “before I will be able to do my bit with the paddle, to assist you in going wherever you wish to go.” Where that might be he had not the slightest notion.
One thing puzzled him. As they prepared to leave the cabin, the dugout was loaded fore and aft with food supplies. In the prow, carefully wrapped in green palm leaves, were the carcasses of two young peccaries, killed that very morning. Piled on top of these were three or four dozen ripe cocoanuts. In the stem were casabas (great potato-like vegetables), tree melons, breadfruit, and a basket filled with strange little red tomatoes.
“Rations for a week,” he mused. “How far from home are these people, anyway?”
He was soon enough to know. Hardly had the dugout, with Roderick in the stem as steersman, been pushed from the shore and allowed to take a downstream course, than the girl, turning upon Johnny one of her most wonderful smiles, said:
“I suppose you think we know where we’re going; but we don’t. We only know we’re on our way.”
“Don—don’t know where you’re going!” Johnny gasped in astonishment. “Then you’re—”
“Lost!” The girl’s brow wrinkled for a second, then the smile came back.
“Shake,” said Johnny, solemnly stretching forth a hand. “We’ll go it together.”