Reading intense interest in her eyes, he told her the whole story of his adventure thus far.
“And now,” he ended with an uncertain smile, “it seems that we—you, your brother and I—are all babes in the woods, so to speak.”
“Perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,” said Jean. “Bad enough, though. You see, I’ve always lived in the tropics with my father. He brought me here when I was five. My brother, who is three years older, was left behind in England.
“He’s done a lot of things, my father has,—bananas, cocoanuts, grapefruit. Just now he is gathering chicle up a lost river.
“Four months ago Rod came to us. The jungle is all new to him. He was quite wild about it. So we went on little exploring trips. I love it, don’t you?”
“It’s all new up in this country. If ever a white man set foot on it he’s forgot it long ago. You cut your way through a jungle, you find a stream, you launch your dugout, which you’ve dragged after you, and you drift on and on through a land that white men have never seen. It’s wonderful! Wonderful!” She closed her eyes as if in a dream.
“It’s dangerous, too,” she exclaimed, suddenly starting up. “You may get lost. We did. One night we slept in the bottom of our dugout—Rod, old Midge and I. When morning came we found ourselves drifting in the center of a great river. What do you think of that? Go to sleep in a stream you can all but reach across, and wake in a broad river. Magic, wouldn’t you call it?”
“No magic about it, though. A thing had happened to our tie rope. Some creature had gnawed it square off. And there we were, drifting down a great black silent river we had never seen before. What were we to do? What would you have done?”
“Try to find my way back to the mouth of the little stream from which I had drifted.”
“That was just what we attempted. That’s how we found you. The mouth of every stream looked alike to us, so all we could do was to go up each one a short way until we knew it was the wrong stream. We had about decided that this was the wrong stream, too, when I discovered your hand print in the mud.”
“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.’”