s sun showed his smiling
face. Andy declared that this was a harbinger of good luck, and his
cousin chose to readily agree with all he said, for it pleased him to
see Andy look more like his old self than he had been for many a day.

"Remember, only one of us ashore at a time until we land this cargo,"
remarked Frank, as they came to bring the boat to the bank, where a
group of natives waited to see what it all meant, surprise written
largely on their dark faces.

"That's right," responded the other traveler. "But I'm going to have
the aeroplane carried out on deck at once, so it can be taken ashore as
soon as we find where we are at. What we want first of all is to hear
about our friend, Carlos Mendoza, the cocoa planter. Perhaps he lives
miles away and we'll have to get some sort of conveyance to tote our
machine out to his place."

"Yes," observed Frank, "I've been laying out plans along that line. If
you don't mind I'll drop ashore while you're having the crates brought
on deck and make inquiries. Even away down here in this wilderness money
talks. Colonel Josiah told us it did for him in the heart of darkest
Africa, you know. And a few bolivars will hire all the help we want."

Andy was perfectly agreeable that his companion should have taken upon
himself the task of engineering things.

"You can always discount me when it comes to bargaining," he said,
laughingly; "so go ahead and fix things to suit yourself, Frank."

Upon reaching shore, Frank, who had taken old Felipe along with him to
serve as interpreter, found that Carlos Mendoza had his home just on the
border of the town, though it was a little distance away. He soon made
arrangements for hiring a native cart to be used in transporting the
precious aeroplane.

In less than half an hour they were on the way. The boat had been left
in charge of McClintock, the Scotch engineer, who would make sure that
the crew remained on board or lost the wages coming to them.

Both of the boys were so excited that they paid little attention to the
strange scenes which now surrounded them in the valley town far back in
the interior of tropical Colombia. Indeed, one might even have suspected
that they had always been accustomed to living in a region where all
manner of tropical fruits abounded, coffee and cocoa were raised as
crops, and birds of brilliant plumage flew overhead.

The truth of the matter was, they knew they would presently come face to
face with the p