Miss Drexel laughed and joked and encouraged; and Wemple, in brutal fashion, compelled Mrs. Morgan to walk every third quarter of a mile.  At the end of an hour the sorrel refused positively to get up, and, so, was abandoned.  Thereafter, Mrs. Morgan rode the roan alternate quarters of miles, and between times walked—­if walk may describe her stumbling progress on two preposterously tiny feet with a man supporting her on either side.

A mile from the river, the road became more civilized, running along the side of a thousand acres of banana plantation.

“Parslow’s,” young Drexel said.  “He’ll lose a year’s crop now on account of this mix-up.”

“Oh, look what I’ve found!” Miss Drexel called from the lead.

“First machine that ever tackled this road,” was young Drexel’s judgment, as they halted to stare at the tire-tracks.

“But look at the tracks,” his sister urged.  “The machine must have come right out of the bananas and climbed the bank.”

“Some machine to climb a bank like that,” was Davies’ comment.  “What it did do was to go down the bank—­take a scout after it, Charley, while Wemple and I get Mrs. Morgan off her fractious mount.  No machine ever built could travel far through those bananas.”

The flea-bitten roan, on its four legs upstanding, continued bravely to stand until the lady was removed, whereupon, with a long sigh, it sank down on the ground.  Mrs. Morgan likewise sighed, sat down, and regarded her tiny feet mournfully.

“Go on, boys,” she said.  “Maybe you can find something at the river and send back for me.”

But their indignant rejection of the plan never attained speech, for, at that instant, from the green sea of banana trees beneath them, came the sudden purr of an engine.  A minute later the splutter of an exhaust told them the silencer had been taken off.  The huge-fronded banana trees were violently agitated as by the threshing of a hidden Titan.  They could identify the changing of gears and the reversing and going ahead, until, at the end of five minutes, a long low, black car burst from the wall of greenery and charged the soft earth bank, but the earth was too soft, and when, two-thirds of the way up, beaten, Charley Drexel braked the car to a standstill, the earth crumbled from under the tires, and he ran it down and back, the way he had come, until half-buried in the bananas.

“‘A Merry Oldsmobile!’” Miss Drexel quoted from the popular song, clapping her hands.  “Now, Martha, your troubles are over.”

“Six-cylinder, and sounds as if it hadn’t been out of the shop a week, or may I never ride in a machine again,” Wemple remarked, looking to Davies for confirmation.

Davies nodded.

“It’s Allison’s,” he said.  “Campos tried to shake him down for a private loan, and—­well, you know Allison.  He told Campos to go to.  And Campos, in revenge, commandeered his new car.  That was two days ago, before we lifted a hand at Vera Cruz.  Allison told me yesterday the last he’d heard of the car it was on a steamboat bound up river.  And here’s where they ditched it—­but let’s get a hustle on and get her into the running.”