ed down and laid
under the shed-like awning.

Three weary days of delirium ensued before the first of the sufferers
unclosed his eyes, illumined by the light of reason, and had the bright
semicircle of light facing him eclipsed for the moment by a slight
figure which crept in beneath the awning to give him food.

And then two more days elapsed before Rob could say feebly,--

"Tell me, Joe, have I been asleep and dreaming?"

"I hope so," said the young Italian, pressing his hand.

"Then you are not dead?"

"Do I look like it? No; but I thought you were. Why, Rob, old chap, we
only got back to you just in time."

"But I thought--we thought that--"

Rob ceased speaking, and Giovanni, who looked brown, strong, and well,
finished his companion's sentence after turning to where the two
famine-pinched feeble men lay listening for an explanation of the events
of the past.

"You thought I had been drowned, and that the men had carried off the
boat while you were all looking for me?"

Rob's eyes said, "Yes," as plainly as eyes could speak. "Of course you
would," said Joe, laughing merrily. "You couldn't help thinking so; but
I wasn't drowned, and the men didn't steal the boat. What say, Shaddy?"

For there was a husky whisper from where the old sailor lay--a ghost of
his former self.

"Say?" whispered the guide sourly,--"that we can see all that."

"Tell us how it was," said Rob, holding out his hand, which Joe grasped
and held, but he did not speak for a few minutes on account of a choking
sensation in his breast as the sun glanced in through the ends of the
awning, after streaming down like a silver shower through the leaves of
the huge tree beneath which the boat was moored, while the swift river,
once more back within its bounds, rippled and sang, and played against
the sides.

"The men told me," said Joe at last, with a slight Italian accent in the
words, now that he was moved by his emotion--"they told me all about
what horror and agony you showed as you all went off to rescue me, while
there I was perched up in the branches of the great tree, expecting
every moment that it would be rolled over by the river, unless I could
creep up to the next bough and the next, all wet and muddy as they were,
and I knew that I could not keep on long at that. But all at once, to
my horror, we began to glide down--oh, so swiftly, but even then I felt
hopeful, for the tree did not turn, and I was far above the water as