“I suppose it does look; as though we were rummaging in your things,” said Blake, deciding instantly that it was best to be frank.  “But we heard a curious ticking noise when we came down here, and we traced it to your bunk.  We didn’t know what it might be, and thought perhaps you had put your watch in the bed, and might have forgotten to take it out.  We looked, and found this—­”

“Ah, my new alarm clock!” exclaimed Mr. Alcando, and what seemed to be a look of relief passed over his face.  He reached in among the bed clothes and picked up the curious brass-bound ticking box, with its many little metallic projections.

“I perhaps did not tell you that I am a sort of inventor,” the Spaniard went on.  “I have not had much success, but I think my new alarm clock is going to bring me in some money.  It works on a new principle, but I am giving it a good test, privately, before I try to put it on the market.”

He took the brass-bound, ticking box from the bed, and must have adjusted the mechanism in a way Blake or Joe did not notice, for the “click-click” stopped at once, and the room seemed curiously still after it.

“Some day I will show you how it works,” the young Spaniard went on.  “I think, myself, it is quite what you call—­clever.”

And with that he put the box in a trunk, and closed the lid with a snap that threw the lock.

“And now, boys, we will soon be there!” he cried with a gay laugh.  “Soon we will be in the beautiful land of Panama, and will see the marvels of that great canal.  Are you not glad?  And I shall begin to learn more about making moving pictures!  That will please me, though I hope I shall not be so stupid a pupil as to make trouble for you, my friends, to whom I owe so much.”

He looked eagerly at the boys.

“We’ll teach you all we know, which isn’t such an awful lot,” said Joe.  “And I don’t believe you’ll be slow.”

“You have picked up some of it already,” went on Blake, for while delaying over making their arrangements in New York the boys and their pupil had gone into the rudiments of moving picture work.

“I am glad you think so,” returned the other.  “I shall be glad when we are at work, and more glad still, when I can, with my own camera, penetrate into the fastness of the jungle, along the lines of our railroad, and show what we have done to bring civilization there.  The film will be the eyes of the world, watching our progress,” he added, poetically.

“Why don’t you come up on deck,” he proceeded.  “It is warm down here.”

“We just came down,” said Joe, “but it is hot,” for they were approaching nearer to the Equator each hour.

While the boys were following the young Spaniard up on deck, Joe found a chance to whisper to Blake: 

“I notice he was not at all anxious to show us how his brass-box alarm clock worked.”

“No,” agreed Blake in a low voice, “and yet his invention might be in such a shape that he didn’t want to exhibit it yet.”