se than the great canal.

"How shall we go?" asked Tom, when they began to plan for the journey.

"Oh, by boat or train, I suppose," said Dick flippantly. "It's a little
too far to walk."

"Yes, Socrates," retorted Tom, "I had imagined as much. But bring your
soaring intellect down to earth and get busy with common things. Which
shall it be?"

"I'd leave it to the toss of a coin," was the answer. "I don't care
either way."

"I vote for the train," broke in Bert. "We've had a good deal of sea
travel in our trip to the Olympic Games and that last voyage to China.
Besides, I'd like to see Mexico and Central America. It's the land of
flowers and romance, of guitars and senoritas, of Cortes and the
Aztecs----"

"Yes," interrupted Dick grimly, "and of bandits and beggars and greasers
and guerillas. Perhaps you'll see a good deal more of Mexico than you
want. Still, I'm game, and if Tom----"

"Count me in," said Tom promptly. "A spice of danger will make it all
the more exciting. If the Chinese pirates didn't get us, I guess the
Mexicans won't."

So Mexico it was, and up to the time they stopped at the broken bridge no
personal danger had threatened, although it was evident that the country
was a seething volcano. How near they were to that volcano's rim they
little dreamed as they sauntered lazily down to the bridge and watched
the men at work.

The damage proved greater than at first thought, and it was evident that
some time must elapse before it could be thoroughly repaired. Bert and
Tom climbed down the ravine a little way to get a better view of the
trestle. Dick chatted a while with the engineer as he stood, oil can in
hand, near the tender. Then the impulse seized him to walk a little way
up the road that ran beside the track and get some of the kinks out of
his six feet of bone and muscle.

It was a perfect day. The sun shone hotly, but there was a cooling
breeze that tempered the heat and made it bearable. Great trees beside
the road afforded a grateful shade and beneath them Dick walked on.
Everything was so different from what he had been accustomed to that at
each moment he saw something new. Strange, gaily-plumaged birds
fluttered in the branches overhead. Slender feathery palms rose a
hundred feet in the air. Here a scorpion ran through the chapparal;
there a tarantula scurried away beneath the dusty leaves of a cactus
plant. Up in the transparent blue a vulture soared, and made