Upon the point of their
purpose in visiting the place Condon found the boy reticent, and
so he did not push the matter--he had learned all that he cared to
know as it was.
Several times Condon attempted to draw the lad into a card game;
but his victim was not interested, and the black looks of several
of the other men passengers decided the American to find other
means of transferring the boy's bank roll to his own pocket.
At last came the day that the steamer dropped anchor in the lee
of a wooded promontory where a score or more of sheet-iron shacks
making an unsightly blot upon the fair face of nature proclaimed
the fact that civilization had set its heel. Straggling upon the
outskirts were the thatched huts of natives, picturesque in their
primeval savagery, harmonizing with the background of tropical
jungle and accentuating the squalid hideousness of the white man's
pioneer architecture.
The boy, leaning over the rail, was looking far beyond the man-made
town deep into the God-made jungle. A little shiver of anticipation
tingled his spine, and then, quite without volition, he found
himself gazing into the loving eyes of his mother and the strong
face of the father which mirrored, beneath its masculine strength,
a love no less than the mother's eyes proclaimed.
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