re before, till their mental confusion became greater, their ideas
more sadly confused, and the tract of low-lying water-netted country,
far from seeming the paradise through which they had glided on their way
up, now seemed the dwelling-place of despair.

"Isn't there one of you who can guide us aright?" cried the doctor
despairingly. "Is it possible that what seemed so easy to that
treacherous Spanish wretch should prove such a horrible problem to us
all?"

For a time no one spoke, the men hanging their heads, and by way of
showing their earnestness tugging harder at their oars. But at the next
appeal Joe Cross was egged on to make some answer.

"You see, sir," he said, "there isn't anything we wouldn't do for you.
The lads here are sharp enough, but they wants a handle to work them.
We are only sailors, used to having an officer over us, and without him
we aren't much account."

"Oh," groaned the doctor to Rodd, "and I cannot direct them! Rodd, boy,
my brain feels as if it were giving way."

"Don't be down-hearted, sir. Don't chuck up your pluck, young
gentlemen," continued the poor fellow earnestly. "We must get out at
last. It all seemed so easy as we come up; but without that Spanish
chap, and now that it seems to be all turned upside down like, as we are
coming back'ards, it's like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.
You see, me and my messmates have turned it all over in our heads, and
it always comes to this, that that storm either made us take a wrong
turning, or else that that Spaniard took us into a tangle of
watercourses out of which no one but him and them niggers could find the
way."

"Yes, yes," said the doctor; "we were thoroughly trapped into what has
proved to be a horrible maze."

"Ay, ay, sir!" cried Joe. "And amazing it is; but we are not going to
give up, sir. Wish we may all die if we do; for you see, it must all
come right at last. We have a lot of provisions, plenty of powder and
shot; we can't fail for fresh water, which is a great thing for sailors;
there's wood enough to make fires for five hundred years; and as for
good fish to eat, why, you could almost catch them with your hands."

"No, my men," said the doctor, more firmly, "we are not going to
despair, for if we keep going down-stream we must reach the main river
at last."

"That's what I keep thinking, uncle," cried Rodd; "but every time we
turn out of one of these rivers we seem to get into another, and I want