?
And everybody knows more about this affair than you or I, don't they?"

"I don't know," drawled Little, and without another word he pulled his
hat over his eyes, snuggled down, and gave Barry his answer in the shape
of a soft, prolonged snore.

The moon sailed overhead and dipped with dimming luster behind a ridge
of jungle giants whose upper branches were waking into life. Monkeys and
parrots with higher, keener vision than that of the boatmen heralded the
gray light breaking low down in the east, and with the swiftness of the
moon's coming, dawn turned the black of the river to gray, then to
yellow.

But now the yellowness was clear and transparent, different altogether
from the muddy foulness of the lower reaches. And the country around
lost the density of matted jungle and undulated in a succession of
grassy stretches through which cropped great round hummocks of sandy
hills. The stream narrowed to a swift running gorge between two such
hummocks, then suddenly widened out to five times the width, and the
water rippled over sandy shoals that barred further progress in the
loaded boat. Barry searched the scene eagerly, bringing the boat to the
wind to arrest her way; then suddenly he awoke Little with a shake.

"Come to life, man, we're here!" he said.

Little sat up, rubbing his eyes in confusion at the total change in his
surroundings, for he had not opened them once since falling asleep. To
be there meant to him that he had arrived among gold dust and romance,
and he sought as eagerly as Barry for signs of their arrival. He was
disappointed, frankly and utterly.

"Gosh, Barry, this can't be it!" he gasped. "Why, man, where are the red
shirts and the faro joints?"

To the eye Houten's gold sands offered little of allure. On both shores
the river seemed exactly as other rivers, except for a small cluster of
ramshackle grass huts under a clump of dwarf trees and a rough raft of
logs tied with grass ropes to a stake set in the bed of the river
itself. Of life there was none visible; but as oars rattled in the boat
to swing her inshore, a sleepy native emerged from one of the huts, and
his swift cry brought a score of his fellows to stare at the intruders.

"Don't look like El Dorado, at that!" grunted Barry, steering inshore
and running the boat up on the sand.

"El Dorado? The gold washers look more like collar washers to me!"
retorted Little disgustedly. "And is this what I gave up a decent
drumming roun