By the time we had our shelters erected and this little mix-up with the blacks had been settled, Lewis suddenly looked up from his notebook in which he was keeping a sort of journal, and said, “Say!”
“Say it,” I remarked, lazily, from my hammock where I was resting.
“Whoop-ee!” shouted Lewis, leaping to his feet.
“What’s got you?” I demanded. “Is it a vampire down your neck or a crocodile up your trousers leg?”
“This, my beloved fellow American, happens to be the fourth day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen, and the one hundred and forty-first year of our country’s independence!” was his reply, whereupon I stared at him a moment and then I, too, leaped up and emitted a war whoop. Fourth of July in a far-away jungle!
In the British Guiana wilds we of course couldn’t do just as we would have done back in the United States, but we did the next best thing. While he was getting out some firearms I dug up several flags we had with us and soon the Stars and Stripes were much in evidence. We rigged a pole in the center of our camp, raised our largest flag and, with hats off, repeated the oath of allegiance. Then we ran the colors up on our boats and stuck the smaller flags about in various places.
Our next move was a bit of noise.
“Bang-bang-bang-bang!” went our repeating rifles. Then we shot our revolvers and finally we improvised a “cannon” out of a hollow log, filled it with blasting powder from our stock for mining, attached a fuse and kept up our firing of small arms until sunset, which was then but a few minutes coming.
Lewis lighted the fuse. I stood by at the flag and began to lower it.