artin dream of his dear
old aunt, while sleeping under the shelter of these strange-leaved
tropical trees and surrounded by the wild sounds of that distant land,
until he dreamed himself back again in the old village. Then he would
rush to the well-known school, and find all the boys there except Bob
Croaker, who he felt certain must be away drowning the white kitten; and
off he would go and catch him, sure enough, in the very act, and would
give him the old thrashing over again, with all the additional vigour
acquired during his rambles abroad thrown into it. Then he would run
home in eager haste, and find old Mrs Grumbit hard at the one thousand
nine hundred and ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr Arthur
Jollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the old lady's bed-curtain
chintz and high-crowned cap, with the white kitten in his arms and his
spectacles on his chin, watching the process with intense interest and
cautioning her not to forget the "hitch" by any means; whereupon the
kitten would fly up in his face, and Mr Jollyboy would dash through the
window with a loud howl, and Mrs Grumbit's face would turn blue; and,
uncoiling an enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among
the trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point and found
the marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowful
solemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as
he steered his light craft down the broad stream of the Tocantins.

The trader could speak little more English than sufficed to enable him
to say "yes" and "no;" Barney could speak about as much Portuguese as
enabled him to say "no" and "yes;" while Martin, by means of a slight
smattering of that language, which he had picked up by ear during the
last few months, mixed now and then with a word or two of Latin, and
helped out by a clever use of the language of signs, succeeded in
becoming the link of communication between the two.

For many weeks they continued to descend the river; paddling
energetically when the stream was sluggish, and resting comfortably when
the stream was strong, and sometimes dragging their canoe over rocks and
sand-banks to avoid rapids--passing many villages and plantations of the
natives by the way--till at last they swept out upon the bosom of the
great Amazon River.

The very first thing they saw upon entering it was an enormous
alligator, fully eighteen feet long, sound asleep on a