“Getting you well.”
“That’s wonderfully kind. That’s—”
“Not so much in the tropics. Down here time doesn’t matter. We’ll find our way home sooner or later. When we do I’ll say: ‘Hello, Dad. I’m back,’ and Dad will say, ‘So I see, daughter, so I see.’”
So lightly did these words come tripping from her lips, so rippling was the laughter following, that for a moment Johnny was deceived.
“She means it, too,” he told himself. “So this is the way of the tropics.”
The deception lasted for but one moment. The wrinkle across her brow, the far away look in her eyes, the irregular dip of her paddle, all told plainer than words that she had been playing a part; that she was concealing homesickness and hunger for friends; that they might be days, even weeks, finding their way back, and that in the meantime all her father’s men would be searching the streams and bush for her and her brother.
In the midst of all this fresh revelation, their boat suddenly shot from the creek into a mighty stream of black and sullen waters.
“The Rio Hondo!” exclaimed Johnny.
“And down this river is your camp,” the girl said quietly. “We will take you there at once.”
For a moment Johnny was tempted. He had been away for more than two weeks. What had happened in that time? What of Pant? What of his Caribs? What of Daego and his men? Had there been a battle? If so, who had won? Whose camp fires gleamed there in the heart of that magic mahogany forest, his own or Daego’s? He did so want to know the answer to all these questions.