“No more I am.  But there goes the sun.  How quick it seems to drop out of sight down here,” Frank remarked.

“Sure,” laughed his cousin, “but all the same I fail to hear any bang.  You remember the Irish immigrant who heard the sunset gun at a military post in America for the first time and on being told that it denoted sunset, innocently exclaimed, ’Sure, the sun niver goes down in Ould Ireland wid a bang like thot!” But already the dusk is creeping out of the dense woods on to the river.  And I’m getting hungry.  It must be near supper time.  I wonder what the folks up home are doing right now?”

“Just what we are, likely—­waiting to hear a welcome sound that will call them in to feed.  And there comes little Pepito to blow the conch shell that he uses for a dinner bell.  Come, Andy, get a move on you.  Another night and then we are going to do business at the old stand.  It will be just fine to soar above this strange country and see for miles and miles—­mountains, valleys, rivers, tropical forests, and everything that we’ve never looked down on before.”

The two young aviators went into the cabin for supper.  They fared very well insofar as food was concerned.  Of course, both of them missed the home cookery.  The native who attended to this part of the program did his level best to please, and he certainly had plenty to work with.  But his Spanish style of serving even the most ordinary dishes of tinned meats with a dash of garlic was beginning to pall upon the taste of the American lads.

Frank had even started to show him other ways of cooking, and they had hopes of converting the cook by slow degrees.

The night was in one sense a repetition of the preceding one.  True, they would not have to consider being halted by a gathering army of the revolutionists, and that was a comfort all around.  At the same time Frank deemed it necessary that he and his cousin keep watch.  And Andy was perfectly willing to sacrifice some of his personal comfort for the sake of insuring the safety of the precious aeroplane.

It proved just as well that they had so determined.  During Frank’s second term on guard and somewhere around four o’clock, while darkness covered the land, he thought he caught a glimpse of a shadow crossing the deck, headed in the direction of the lazerette.

He had been lazily reclining on a soft cushion made of several blankets and looking up at the silvery stars, but immediately he became fully aroused.  This might mean danger in some shape toward the aeroplane.  And no matter, it behooved him to investigate.

So he softly arose to his knees and crept after the shadowy figure.

Cautiously he approached the place where the door belonging to the storeroom was to be found.  As he advanced thus he could occasionally catch a peculiar clicking sound, which he believed must be made by some one trying to pick the lock!

The engine of the boat kept up considerable of a racket as it steadily worked along without the dreaded hitch.  Besides, there was always more or less splashing of water against the sides, as they pushed against the swift current of the Magdalena.  All these things combined to muffle the clicking sound frequently, yet during little lulls Frank could catch it again.