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on a trip up one of the grandest rivers of South America.
But there he was that hot, sunny day, standing up in the stern of the broad, lightly built boat which swung by a long rope some fifty feet behind a large schooner, of shallow draught but of lofty rig, so that her tremendous tapering masts might carry their sails high above the trees which formed a verdant wall on each side of the great river, and so catch the breeze when all below was sheltered and calm.
The schooner was not anchored, but fast aground upon one of the shifting sand-banks that made navigation difficult. Here she was likely to lie until the water rose, or a fresh cool wind blew from the south and roughened the dull silvery gleaming surface into waves where she could roll and rock and work a channel for herself through the sand, and sail onward tugging the boat which swung behind.
It was hot, blistering hot! and all was very still save for the rippling murmur of the flowing river and the faint buzz of the insect plagues which had come hunting from the western shore, a couple of hundred yards away, while the eastern was fully two miles off, and the voices of the man and the boy he addressed sounded strange in the vast solitudes through which the mighty river ran.
Not that these two were alone, for there were five more occupants of the boat, one a white man--from his dress--a leg being visible beneath a kind of awning formed of canvas, the other four, Indians or half-breeds--from the absence of clothing and the colour of their skins as they lay forward--fast asleep, like the occupant of the covered-in portion.
The great schooner was broad and Dutch-like in its capacious beam, and manned by a fair-sized crew, but not a soul was visible, for it was early in the afternoon; the vessel was immovable, and all on board were fast asleep.
Shadrach Naylor, too, had been having his nap, with his pipe in his mouth, but it had fallen out with a rap in the bottom of the boat, and this had awakened him with a start to