“Sure,” replied Frank, as he readily took the offered hand; but it lay like a cold toad in his grasp, as Andy afterward expressed it, for Puss insisted on also bidding him good-bye ere he made a start in his biplane.

“Well, now, what d’ye think of that?” said Andy, as they stood and watched the other mount upward and caught the wave of his hand ere he started down river, being fully five hundred feet high.  “Did he mean it, Frank?  Would you really want to go so far as to trust that snake if the chance ever came again for him to do you a bad turn?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders.

“Say, ask me something easy, won’t you?” he remarked.  “Because you know how hard it is for a leopard to change its spots.  Perhaps Puss has seen a light; but excuse me if I doubt it.  Naturally he felt kind of cheap, because we got him out of a bad hole and placed him under obligations.  But that will wear off in a short time.”

“Right it will,” declared Andy.  “I give you my word, Frank, that the next time we see him he’ll have a fine story all fixed about how he was just going to jump on that Spanish revolutionary fellow, and twisting his gun out of his hand, shoot him down, and then fly away.  Oh, don’t I know Puss in Boots, though?  He’ll hate us both worse than ever just because he’s beholden to us.  Rats! him reform?  Not much!”

By the middle of the afternoon they had advanced far enough to know that another lap ought to carry them to town, and of course all of them were anxious to have the journey completed.

“If it could only be written up and sworn to,” said Andy, enthusiastically, “I reckon it’d go down in the annals of aeroplaning as the most wonderful stunt carried out up to date.  But people won’t take our word for it.”

“We’ve got the evidence of it, though, in the person of your good dad, and people may believe what Professor Bird says over his own honored signature, however much they might doubt the yarn of a couple of boys,” Frank remarked, as he took a last look, to see that both his passengers were snugly settled, ere starting the motor.

“We’re on the home stretch now!” declared Andy, after they had again mounted up into the realm of space and found their course northward.

“Yes,” observed Frank, “we’re homing pigeons now, if any kind of bird.”

“At any rate,” laughed the professor, “we’re birds of passage, and one of them is mighty glad of the opportunity to get back into the old world again.”

In due time they sighted the town, and as before, the greatest excitement followed as they headed across the place, looking to land where the journey had begun—­in the yard of the cocoa planter’s place.

Of course Senor Carlos was delighted with the success of the mission.  For two days the Bird boys were the center of an enthusiastic demonstration.  Frank was a little nervous lest they be visited by some of the revolutionists, but such did not turn out to be the case.  And on the third morning the little steam yacht once more headed down the turbulent Magdalena, with a heavy rain promising more water to add to the flood, as wet weather had seemingly set in again.