canoe and camp seemed
to weld the voyagers into one compact unit.

Through hours of blazing sun, when the mercury of the thermometer which
Knowlton had hung inside the shady _toldo_ cabin fluctuated well above
100 degrees, the hardy crew forged on. Through drenching rains they
still hung doggedly to their work, suspending it only when the water
fell in such drowning quantities that they were forced to tie up hastily
to shore and seek cover in order to breathe. When sunset neared they
picked with unerring eye a spot fit for camping, attacked the bush with
whirling machetes, cleared a space, threw up pole frameworks, swiftly
thatched them with great palm leaves, and thus created from the jungle
two crude but efficient huts--one for themselves and one for their
_patrones_. When night had shut down and all hands squatted around the
fire in a nightly smoke talk they regaled their employers with wild
tales of adventures in bush and town, some of which were not at all
polite, but all of which were mightily interesting. And despite all
discomforts, fatigue, and the minor incidents and accidents which often
lead fellow travelers in the wilderness to bickering and bitterness, no
friction developed between the men of the north and the men of the
south.

Not that the Peruvians were at all obsequious or servile. They were a
reckless, lawless, Godless gang, perpetually bearing themselves with the
careless insolence which had characterized them at first, blasphemous of
speech toward one another--but never toward the North Americans.
Disputes arose among them with volcanic suddenness, and more than once
knives were half drawn, only to be slipped back under the tongue-lashing
of the hawk-nosed _puntero_, Jose, who damned the disputants completely
and promised to cut out the bowels of any man daring to lift his
blade clear of its sheath. Five minutes afterward the fire eaters
would be on as good terms as ever, shrugging and grinning at their
passengers--particularly Tim, who, shaking his head disgustedly, would
grumble:

"Aw, pickles! Another frog fight gone bust!"

Yet Tim, for all his disparagement of these abortive spats, knew full
well that any one of them held the makings of a deadly duel and that
Jose's lurid threats were no mere Latin hyperbole. He realized that the
red-crowned bowman ruled his crew exactly as any of the old-time
buccaneers whom he resembled had governed their free-booting gangs--by
the iron hand; and that, t