only alert member
of the trio. Wherein they erred.

The truth was that every one of the three adventurers was on his guard.
Tim had not forgotten the last words of his boon companion, Joao, and at
the first opportunity he had quietly passed on that warning. Moreover,
McKay and Knowlton, without discussing the matter, had meditated on the
unexpected assistance of Schwandorf, the speed with which the crew had
been obtained, the promptness of Jose to accept the first payment
offered, and other things. Wherefore it had come about that at no hour
of the twenty-four was every eye and ear closed. And the real reason why
red Tim and blond Knowlton slept by day was that they thus made up the
slumber lost at night.

Not that either of them patrolled the camp in sentry go. So far as the
Peruvians knew, they slept as soundly as McKay. But, lying in their
hammocks, they divided the night watches between them on a schedule as
regular as that of a military camp, though the shifts necessarily were
longer. As sunset came always at six o'clock and all hands sought their
hanging beds two hours later, Tim's "tour of duty" lasted until one in
the morning. When the phosphorescent hands of his watch pointed to that
hour he stealthily reached out and jabbed Knowlton, sleeping beside him.
When a barely audible "All right" reached his ears he was officially
relieved.

Night followed night, became a week, lengthened into a fortnight. Still,
so far as the crew was concerned, nothing happened. A little rough
banter among them as they smoked their last cigarettes, then sleep and
snores; and that was all until morning. Men less experienced in night
vigils than the ex-soldiers would have abandoned their watches long
before this--if, indeed, they had ever adopted them. But these three
were schooled in patience. Moreover, neither Tim nor Knowlton had ever
before penetrated the jungle, and at times the light of the waxing moon
revealed to their eyes strange things which they never would have seen
by day. So the tedium of the long hours of wakefulness might be broken
at any moment.

Once they camped close to a conical hillock of compact earth, some four
feet high and almost stone hard, from which radiated narrow covered
galleries--the citadel and viaducts of a community of termites. Tim,
still harboring vivid recollections of his ant battle at Remate de
Males--though by this time he had trained himself to sleep in his
hammock, where he was comparati