[IX]
ACROSS NICARAGUA
In the course of an hour or so three light-draught stern-wheel steamboats ("wheelbarrows," Bill derisively called them) came puffing up alongside. Into them the passengers were now unceremoniously bundled, like so many sheep, and in such numbers as hardly to allow room to move about, yet all in high glee at escaping from the confinement of the ship, at which many angrily shook their fists as the fasts were cast off. In another quarter of an hour the boats were steaming slowly up the San Juan River, thus commencing the second stage of the long journey.
For the first hour or two the travelers were fully occupied in looking about them with charmed eyes, as with mile after mile, and turn after turn, the wonders of a tropical forest, all hung about with rare and beautiful flowers, and all as still as death, passed before them. But Bill, to whom the sight was not new or strange, declared that for his part he would rather have a sniff of good old Boston's east wind than all the cloying perfumes of that wilderness of woods and blossoms. It was not long, however, before attention was drawn to the living inhabitants of this fairyland.
First a strange object, something between a huge lizard and a bloated bullfrog, was spied clinging to a bush on the bank. No sooner seen than crack! crack! went a dozen pistol shots, and down dropped the dirty green-and-yellow creature with a loud splash into the river.
"There's a tidbit gone," observed Bill, in Walter's ear.
"What! eat that thing?" demanded Walter with a disgusted look.
"Sartin. They eat um; eat anything. And what you can't eat, 'll eat you. If you don't b'leeve it, look at that 'ar reptyle on the bank yonder," said Bill, pointing out the object in question with the stem of his pipe.
Walter followed the direction of Bill's pipe.