There,
stay a quarter of an hour, and then be off back to bed--such as it is,"
he added, with a laugh.

"Oh, I'm used to hard beds. I can sleep anywhere--on the deck or a
bench, one as well as the other."

"I say, have you ever been up as high as this before?"

"No, never higher than the town. It's all as fresh to me as to you."

"Then we go up a river to-morrow?"

"I suppose so. Old Shaddy has it all his own way, and he keeps dropping
hints about what he is going to take us to see."

"And I daresay it will all turn out nothing. What he likes may not suit
us. But there, we shall see."

Then they sat in silence, listening to the rustlings and whistlings in
the air as of birds and great moths flitting and gliding about; the
shrieks, howls, and yells from across the river; and to the great
plungings and splashings in the black water, whose star-gemmed bosom
often showed waves with the bright reflections rising and falling, and
whose surface looked as if the fire-flies had fallen in all up the river
after their giddy evolutions earlier in the night, and were now floating
down rapidly toward the sea.

Rob broke the silence at last.

"How is it this stream always runs so fast?" he said.

"Because the waters come from the mountains. There's a great waterfall,
too, higher up, where the whole river comes plunging down hundreds of
feet with a roar that can be heard for miles."

"Who says so? who has seen it?"

"Nobody ever has seen it. It is impossible to get to it. The water is
so swift and full of rocks that no boat can row up, and the shores are
all one dank, tangled mass that no one can cut through. Nobody can get
there."

"Why not? I tell you what: we'll talk to Shaddy to-morrow."

"He wouldn't go. He told me once that he tried it, and couldn't get
there. He nearly lost his life."

"I'll make him try again and take us."

"I tell you he wouldn't."

"Well, you'll see."

"What will you do?"

"Tell him--fair play, mind: you will not speak?"

"Of course not."

"Then look here, Joe; I'll say to him that I've heard of the place, and
how difficult it is, and that I wish we had some guide who really knew
the country and could take us there."

Joe shook his head.

"Beside, we could not attempt it without Mr Brazier wished to go."

"If you told him about that great fall, he would wish to go for the sake
of being the discoverer. You'll see. What's that?"

A tremendous splash, so near to t