"It's a hike," Davies said cheerfully.

"Six miles of it," Wemple agreed, equally cheerfully. "Let's beat it."

A shot from the river, where they had left Peter in the boat, started
them on the run for the bank. A scattering of shots, as from two rifles,
followed. And while the Dutch superintendent, in execrable Spanish,
shouted affirmations of Dutch neutrality into the menacing dark, across
the gunwale of _Chill II_ they found the body of the tow-headed
youth whose business it had been not to die.

* * * * *

For the first hour, talking little, Davies and Wemple stumbled along the
apology for a road that led through the jungle to the lodge. They did
discuss the glares of several fires to the east along the south bank of
Panuco River, and hoped fervently that they were dwellings and not
wells.

"Two billion dollars worth of oil right here in the Ebaño field alone,"
Davies grumbled.

"And a drunken Mexican, whose whole carcass and immortal soul aren't
worth ten pesos including hair, hide, and tallow, can start the bonfire
with a lighted wad of cotton waste," was Wemple's contribution. "And if
ever she starts, she'll gut the field of its last barrel."

Dawn, at five, enabled them to accelerate their pace; and six o'clock
found them routing out the occupants of the lodge.