to our canoe again and paddled off."

"You can find the place again?"

"Yes. But I much doubt if we shall find him there."

"Never mind. We've something to start with now, and that's worth a lot.
Get busy with your boats and supplies, boys, right away. Tim and Merry,
let's dig out our essentials and start. We're on a hot trail at last.
Let's go!"

CHAPTER XI.

OUT OF THE AIR

Again the sun fought the mists of a new day, casting a pallid, watery
light on the livid green roof of the limitless jungle. High up under
that roof, more than a hundred feet above the ground, the morning alarm
clock went off with a scream, the sudden chorus of monkeys and macaws
awaking after a few hours of silence. Down on the eastern shore of the
river, in a little natural port where the shadows still lay thick, men
stirred under their black mosquito nets, yawned, and waited for more
light before starting another day's journey.

To three of the five men housed under those flimsy coverings the somber
hue of their nets was new. On leaving Remate de Males the insect bars
had been clean white; and though they had grown somewhat soiled from
daily handling, they never had approached the drab dinginess of the
barriers draping the hammocks of the Peruvian rivermen. In fact, their
owners had been at some pains to keep them as clean as possible, folding
them each morning with military precision and stowing them carefully.
Wherefore they were somewhat taken aback when informed that nice white
nets were decidedly not the thing in this part of the world.

"Up to this place, senhores, they have done no harm," Pedro said, before
leaving the coronel's grounds. "But from here on they will not do at
all. The weakest moonlight--yes, even starlight--would make them stand
out in the darkness like tombstones. A few days more and we shall be in
the cannibal country. And it is an old trick of those eaters of men to
skulk along the shore by night, watching a camp until all are asleep,
and then sneak up with spears ready. A rush and a swift stab of the
spears into those white nets, and you are dead or dying from the
poisoned points. I would no more sleep under a white net than I would
lie in my hammock and blow a horn to show where I was. Your light nets
must stay here. We will find dark ones for you."

Thus the voyagers learned another of those little things on which
sometimes hinges life or death. Even McKay, with his experience of other
jungles, had