“Do yeou s’pose they will have me?”
“Gladly. It isn’t a question of that, but whether you have the sand to stand up in a spot where you are likely to lose your life any minute.”
“Reckon I can stand up where you can, and if I do lay down it will be to stay there. Give me your hand, old feller. I like yeou.”
They were now approaching the estancia of Don de Estuaray, who lived in a pleasant valley several miles from any settlement, and as they advanced Jack could not help noticing the tall growth of a patch of vegetation on their right hand, as they were entering the spacious grounds.
To his wonder he saw cotton plants that reached far above his head and sugar cane which stood like forest trees. Plum Plucky, standing on his shoulders, with Fret Offut, had he been living then and there, on his shoulders, could not have reached the top of the lowest plants!
He saw indigo plants that amazed him for their size, and altogether it was such a sight as he had never seen.
A short distance away he saw a field of oats which reared their heads into the air to a height of more than fifteen feet.
Plum Plucky seeing the look of surprise on his countenance, said:
“Can’t guess what made that stuff grow so? I can tell you. I just brought down some of that funny dirt found in the barren spots on the hills yonder and put a good lot round the roots. It beats all creation how it sends the stuff into the air. The don said I’d kill it all, but I knowed better, for I had seen the wild stuff growing like fun all round the edges of sich places. But it don’t seem to hitch on in the spots themselves. S’pect it’s too stout there.”
Jack at once recalled the accounts he had heard of the nitrate beds on the Peruvian hills, though he did not dream then of the importance of this discovery to him.