It was two days before the boys found a vessel going their way, and even then Jack insisted that his father bribed the owners to run off their course in order to set the boys and their motorboats down at the mouth of the Amazon river.  The boat, however, was a fast one, equal in speed to a modern ocean liner; and in ten days from the time of starting from New York--on the 12th of August--the boys were stemming the current of the great river--more like a shoreless sea there at the mouth than a river!