s flooded and we shall
have to look out to keep from grounding right away from the river's
course."

"You will take care of that," said Sir Humphrey, smiling.

"I shall try, sir," said the captain grimly, "for I don't think you'd
like to wake up some morning and find the brig in the middle of a
forest, waiting till the next flood-time came."

A week later, after being baffled again and again by adverse winds,
Brace and his brother stood upon the deck of the brig one evening just
as the wind dropped, as if simultaneously with the descent of the sun
like a huge globe of orange fire behind a bank of trees a hundred yards
to their left. The river, smooth and glassy, glowed in reflection from
the ruddy sky, the sails flapped, and, no longer answering to her helm,
the vessel was beginning slowly to yield to the sluggish current, when
there was a rattling sound as the chain cable ran through the
hawse-hole, and directly after the anchor took hold in the muddy bottom,
the way on the brig was checked, and she swung in mid-stream with her
bowsprit pointing out the direction of her future course--a long open
waterway between two rapidly-darkening banks of trees whose boughs
drooped over and dipped their muddied tips in the stream.

"Will this do, squire?" said the captain.

"Gloriously," said Brace; "but I thought you meant to make fast every
night to one of the trees."

"By-and-by, my lad, by-and-by, when there's a handy tree. This would be
bad landing for a boat--all one tangle of jungle, and hard to get
through. You wanted to get where it was wild: hear that?"

"Yes," said Brace excitedly, as he heard a long-drawn cry from out of
the forest, one which was answered from a distance, while the last cry
was replied to faintly from still farther away. "What's that--a
jaguar?"

"Monkey," said the captain drily, "and that grunting just beginning and
rising into a regular boom isn't made by the pumas, for I don't think
there'd be any in these great forest-lands."

"What then?" said Brace, in a low voice, as if awe-stricken by the
peculiar sounds.

"Frogs, my lad, frogs."

_Quaaak_! A peculiarly loud and strident hollow echoing cry, which was
startling in its suddenness and resembled nothing so much as a
badly-blown note upon a giant trombone.

"What's that?"

"That?" said the captain, thrusting his hat on one side so as to leave
ample room for scratching one ear. "That? Oh, that's a noise I only
remember hearin