“At first they decided that a ditch about eight hundred feet wide would be enough to keep the top soil from slipping down.  But they finally had to make it nearly three times that width, or eighteen hundred feet at the top, so as to make the sides slope gently enough.”

“And yet slides occur even now,” remarked Joe, dubiously.

“Yes, because the work isn’t quite finished.”

“And we’re going to get one of those slides on our films?”

“If we go, yes; and I don’t see but what we’d better go.”

“Then I’m with you, Blake, old man!” cried Joe, affectionately slapping his chum on the back with such energy that the book flew out of the other’s hands.

“Look out what you’re doing or you’ll get the librarian after you!” cried Blake, as he picked up the volume.  “Well, then, we’ll consider it settled—­we’ll go to Panama?”

He looked questioningly at his chum.

“Yes, I guess so.  Have you told that Spaniard?”

“No, not yet, of course.  I haven’t seen him since you did.  But I fancy we’d better write to Mr. Hadley first, and let him know we will go.  He’ll wonder why we haven’t written before.  We can explain about the delayed letter.”

“All right, and when we hear from him, and learn more of his plans, we can let Mr. Alcando hear from us.  I guess we can mosey along with him all right.”

“Yes, and we’ll need a helper with the cameras and things.  He can be a sort of assistant while he’s learning the ropes.”

A letter was written to the moving picture man in New York, and while waiting for an answer Blake and Joe spent two days visiting places of interest about Central Falls.

“If this is to be another break in our vacation we want to make the most of it,” suggested Joe.

“That’s right,” agreed Blake.  They had not yet given the Spaniard a definite answer regarding his joining them.

“It does not matter—­the haste, young gentlemen,” Mr. Alcando had said with a smile that showed his white teeth, in strong contrast to his dark complexion.  “I am not in so much of a haste.  As we say, in my country, there is always manana—­to-morrow.”

Blake and Joe, while they found the Spaniard very pleasant, could not truthfully say that they felt for him the comradeship they might have manifested toward one of their own nationality.  He was polite and considerate toward them—­almost too polite at times, but that came natural to him, perhaps.

He was a little older than Joe and Blake, but he did not take advantage of that.  He seemed to have fully recovered from the accident, though there was a nervousness in his actions at times that set the boys to wondering.  And, occasionally, Blake or Joe would catch him surreptitiously looking at them in a strange manner.

“I wonder what’s up?” said Blake to Joe, after one of those occasions.  “He sure does act queer.”

“That’s what I say,” agreed Joe.  “It’s just as though he were sorry he had to be under obligations to us, if you can call it that, for saving his life.”