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us the rest of the trip. I’ll be able to find out if they know where gold can be found in the Colorado-Chico. We should keep on. We aren’t going to follow our own tracks back to Asriamas, are we?’

I was convinced. ‘Onward,’ I shouted. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure, Marcus? Whatever happens, we’ll make it. If we run out of rice, we’ll hunt game.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Karl went on. ‘No one ever dies of starvation in the jungle. We’ll find food.’

But Marcus wasn’t at all convinced. ‘I want to turn back,’ he said stubbornly.

Kevin looked thoughtful. He bent over the map a long while. ‘Maybe we should follow the Cocus down to the mouth of the Lansa River,’ he suggested. ‘It’s on the Peruvian border. There are villages marked on the map there. We could stock up on provisions there and then go on.’

‘No, I don’t want to go that far out of the way,’ I objected. ‘If we go all that way, I’m sure that we’ll never turn back to the Indian village. Either we go on as planned or we turn back. I’m not about to walk all the way to Peru.’

We decided not to decide at least until morning.