"Of course, sir," one of them cried. "We must clear out the lot." "Very well," said the captain. "I shall stay on board here with two men as guards, and you shall start with three boats to-morrow morning." There was another tremendous cheer at this, and then Dellow threw a wet blanket over all. "I dunno," he said slowly: "I don't think it will be to-morrow, for there's some weather about. Look at that lightning playing away to the west'ard." The first mate was right, for that night there was a frightful storm to announce the breaking-up of the season. The next day the river was in flood, and in spite of all the captain's skill the brig was torn from her moorings and borne rapidly down stream. The days passed, and the weather grew worse and worse. Efforts were made to moor or anchor over and over again, but the river rapidly became like one vast lake with the water extending for miles on either side. After terrible vicissitudes the captain at last breathed freely when at the end of some weeks the "Jason" was rising and falling in half a gale well out to sea. "Hah!" he said; "this is something like. I can turn in now for a rest without expecting to be capsized by being swept over a clump of trees. There's nothing like the sea, after all." "But what about going up the river again?" asked Briscoe. "It will be in flood for months to come, sir, I should say, and my advice would be for us to get safe home with what we've got, and make another trip next year." The captain's advice was taken, and to a man the men volunteered to go again the next season. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ That trip was made, and proved to be quite a blank, for the brig was never got up to the falls. The next year, though, the party started with high hopes, for the weather was magnificent, and they reached the falls; but not without finding that the course of the river had been a good deal altered by two seasons of tremendous floods. But there were the stupendous falls and one morning, leaving the brig snugly anchored in a bay of the river to wait for her golden freight, three boats, with the men well armed, started for their journey up stream. The course of the river below the falls had been greatly altered, but that was as nothing to the complete change in the network of rivers higher up. Let it suffice to say that they rowed and sailed for days which grew into weeks, and then to months, from river into river, and then in and out of what was a great watery puzzle; but the canon with its golden city might have sunk right out of sight, for in spite of every effort the party were driven back at last when the torrential rains set in. The next year the captain said he had had enough of it, and Brace and his brother declined to go, the latter saying that the proverb was right: "You can buy gold too dearly." Briscoe then declared that he would freight another brig and go by himself.