Miguel offered no objection, so they made their way to the edge of the stream. They waited in hiding for some time but saw no sign of the savages. Far up the river, however, a cloud of smoke was ascending high above the treetops. The brown men of the forest had started fires in the hope of driving them out of their place of concealment. “It’s all right,” Miguel said, gazing intently at the smoke. “They’re still over there looking for us. They think we climbed a tree and are trying to smoke us out. We can go on.” The abrupt walls of the gorge on their side of the river were breaking down rapidly; on the other side they still towered high above the turbulent water. Stone and sand terraces replaced the thick jungle from which they had just emerged. But the thing that puzzled them was that the land seemed to end in a point just ahead. There appeared to be water in front and on both sides of them. Each looked at the other in silent apprehension, but not a word was spoken. They hastened down the open strip of land to its termination and then their fears were verified. A roaring rapid surged past on each side and met in front to form one broad, even more treacherous stream that sped away below. They were on an island. With this realization came also the knowledge that there was no escape from their present position, for no raft could long survive in the maelstrom that surrounded them. They could return to the mainland, it is true, by way of the precarious path under the fall; but there were the Indians to be considered, who would not give up the search for days, perhaps, even knowing where the fugitives had gone and fully aware of the fact that they had to come back the same way or remain marooned on the island. “Let’s cook the birds and eat,” David suggested. “I’m almost starved.” “The same here,” Miguel assented. “Then we’ll sleep. I can’t think now. Nothing we can do will make the fix we’re in any worse. So let’s eat and sleep. Tomorrow is another day.” And when the sun was high in the heavens on the following day they awoke much refreshed. They followed the riverbank, going up-stream on the far side of the island, for it had occurred to them that they might not be stranded after all. The channel they had discovered was perhaps another river instead of a branch of the one they had crossed. They walked close to the bank, for there the ground was open. When they had gone less than a mile, farther progress was blocked; they had reached the head of what was, after all, an island. “It _is_ an island, all right,” David said. “See where the stream divides and one side is as bad as the other.” “We have to get off somehow,” Miguel returned, “because we can’t use a raft in that water. We have to reach the mainland and then walk down below the rapids. But how are we going to do it?”