CHAPTER XVI.—“KEEP HER HEAD ON!”
“Tied up!” repeated Alex. “Does that mean that we can’t give ’em back their stuff and take the Rambler away?”
“I’ll find out,” Frank volunteered, turning to the Spaniard who was now shaking his fists’ angrily in the air and almost foaming at the mouth.
There was a short conference, and then Frank turned back to the boys, his manner not at all encouraging.
“He wants his pay, or the boat!” he said. “He says he’s been to all the trouble of getting the goods on board, and that he’s not going to go to the further bother of taking them off. He says we can’t leave this harbor until we settle in full.”
“But he can’t hold the boat,” urged Case. “It doesn’t belong to us, but to Dr. Holcomb.”
Again Frank conferred with the excited dealer in marine supplies.
“He says that in law that makes no difference,” was the discouraging report.
“He got here pretty quickly after the robbery,” Case suggested. “Ask him if he knows that Clay was drugged and robbed,” he added.
Frank talked with the merchant again, and he answered that he had heard something about it, but thought it all a Yankee trick. During this conversation Clay had not opened his mouth to speak. He stood leaning against the cabin door frame, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the deck. Now he turned and entered the cabin, closing the door behind him. Case followed him with his eyes until the door closed, then spoke to Alex.
“Go in there and see what he’s up to,” he said. “He is taking this too hard. Tell him we don’t blame him a bit—that it would have been the same if either one of us had had the money. Tell him to buck up!”
Alex rushed into the cabin and Case gave his attention to the Spanish merchant, who was now gesticulating and calling to three men who were putting off in a row-boat.
“He means to have the Rambler,” Frank said, dejectedly. “Those men are officers. Once they get their feet on this deck it will be impossible to continue on our way.”
Jule heard and turned toward the motors. In a moment sharp explosions which denoted full speed were heard, and the boat began backing out into the river. The men in the row-boat shouted and waved weapons in the air, but did not fire. The Spanish merchant fairly danced up and down in frantic rage, declaring that the boys would all go to jail for what they were doing.
Seeing that these threats and demonstrations made no difference in the speed of the boat, he leaped toward Jule, who stood by the open hatchway over the motors. While the deck was kept closed over the machinery on ordinary occasions, it was so arranged that a square of the deck lifted like a patch above the motors whenever special attention was being given to them.
The Spaniard was almost to the boy when Case tripped him and he fell headlong to the deck. Captain Joe stood watching him for a moment, showing his teeth, and then lay down within a foot of the fellow’s face, his lips snarling, his jaws working.
“If you try to get up we can’t restrain the dog,” Case said, gravely, “so if you think anything of your hide you’d better remain where you are.”
The row-boat followed the Rambler out into the river for a short distance and then turned back. As she did so the smoke of a steamer lifted to the east.
The Spaniard continued his verbal attacks on the boys, though he was careful not to swing his arms nearer to Captain Joe.
“What is he saying?” asked Case.
“He is saying that this is piracy,” answered Frank.
“And the worst of it is that he is right,” grumbled Case. “What are we ever going to do with this fellow. It isn’t fair to take him off with us just because he wants his money.”
“No, it isn’t,” admitted Frank, “but we’re in a tight fix.”
“I’ll help him off when he wants to go!” Jule volunteered. “I’ll pitch him overboard!”
“Play fair!” urged Case. “We’re in a sorry plight, but play fair!”
“He isn’t playing fair!” asserted Jule. “He heard of our trouble, and came right down to take possession of the boat. I believe he knows something about that robbery.”
When the row-boat turned back the Rambler was slowed down so as to keep abreast of the current. The Spaniard was still cursing wildly, and Frank was saying something to him which appeared to make him all the more indignant.
“If he was in Massachusetts,” laughed Jule, “he’d want the state troops called out!”
“What are we going to do with him?” asked Case, and Frank shook his head gravely. “Looks like he has the law with him!”
Then the cabin door opened and Alex came running out with a handful of banknotes waving aloft, his feet fairly dancing along the deck, his lips set for one long whoop, which, being finished, gave the boys a chance to ask questions.
“Where did you get it?”
“Is there a bank in there?”
“How much is there in the roll?”
This last from Jule, who beckoned to Alex to call Captain Joe off guard duty. The dog left reluctantly and joined Clay in the cabin, for the boy who was in a degree responsible for the situation insisted on remaining out of sight until he had “had it out with himself,” as he expressed it.
“Now,” Case snapped out, catching Alex by the shoulder and facing him around. “You keep still long enough to tell us if you’ve found a mine of banknotes in the cabin just when we were in great need. Get on with the story!”
Alex was too excited to talk for a time. He just danced up and down and shook the fluttering ends of the banknotes in the faces of his chums whenever he came in contact with him. In the meantime the Spaniard had arisen to his feet, and now, the Rambler having stopped, stood beckoning to the men in the row-boat to come on.
“Where’s your bill?” asked Case, approaching the gesticulating merchant. “We’re going to cash up. Here, Alex, bring me that money!”
Alex calmly drew a $50 banknote between each of the fingers of his right hand and waved it in the hot air, like a fan.
“Give him our notes!” he said. “Frank accepts ’em!”
Finally Case secured the statement which the fellow had brought on board for payment and handed it over to Frank.
“It is $100,” said the boy, “and most of the charges are double what they should be.”
“Well, what can we do about it?”
“I’ll see.”
Frank continued his talk with the fellow, who was now shaking his head and pointing to the advancing boat. Jule started the motors again and the distance between the two craft increased.
“He won’t take paper money,” Frank said. “He demands gold.”
“All right!” Case cried.
The boy took the paper into his hand, thrust two $50 banknotes into the unwilling hand of the merchant—who looked on in rage and wonder at the bold action!—and handed out a pencil. As long as the row-boat containing the officers was coming on, the fellow would not sign the receipt, insisting that exchange fees must be added, but when the Rambler began to edge out toward the Amazon he seized the pencil with a growl and wrote his name under the column of charges.
This done, he pointed to the row-boat, asking Frank to permit it to come along side, in order to take him off. Frank consented to this, and the boat drew nearer.
“If those officers get within reaching distance I’m afraid they’ll make us trouble.”
This from Case, who stood by Alex and Captain Joe, the latter looking disappointed at the apparently peaceful solution of the trouble.
Alex grinned and whispered to Captain Joe. The dog cocked up his ears and opened his jaws with a snarl.
“Say, mister,” Alex called out to the Spaniard, then, “I can’t control this dog much longer. Jump!”
“He doesn’t understand!” Case observed. “I wish he did!”
“Tell him, Frank!” Alex ordered.
As Frank ceased speaking, after this request, Alex let the dog out at arm’s length, holding only to the collar they had made for him. He made as if he were nearly exhausted holding the animal, now clawing the deck, and the Spaniard stepped to the side of the boat.
Alex let go his hold, the dog sprang forward, and the merchant jumped into the river, making a great touse as he struck the surface on his back and dropped under.
“Hope he’ll drown!” was Jule’s observation.
“No; he won’t drown. The row-boat is heading this way and will pick him up. Now, perhaps we’d better be on our way. I rather think we have committed assault and battery—or, rather, that Captain Joe has—on that chap, and he may want us all arrested.”
Alex laughed as he spoke, making faces at the angry men in the boat. Directly the merchant was hauled, streaming and vociferating, from the river. Then the Rambler was headed out of the mouth of the Madeira and was soon breasting the slow current of the Amazon again.
“Now, about that money!” demanded Case. “Where did it drop from?”
“Why, you know Captain Joe gave us a package, to be opened only when we had come to the end of our rope? Well! we had not only come to the end of our rope, but had lost the rope!”
“And so you opened Captain Joe’s package?”
“Of course we did.”
“I had forgotten all about it,” Case remarked.
“And so had I,” Alex went on. “It was Clay who thought of it. He got it and opened it.”
“How much money is there?”
“Three hundred dollars!”
Both Case and Jule gave vent to a low whistle.
“How did he ever save that much money?” Case asked.
“Why did he give it to us?” was what Jule said. “It is remarkable,” Frank added.
“Perhaps he wrote something and put it in with the money,” suggested Case, in a moment.
“Never thought of that!”
Alex bounced into the cabin and came back in a moment pushing Clay in front of him. Clay, looking half ashamed, half triumphant, held a sheet of writing paper in one hand.
“Just read it!” Alex cried out.
Clay held it out so that the large, irregular character written on it might be seen from a distance.
“KEEP HER HEAD ON!”
That was the message!
It seemed to the boys, all of whom were greatly affected, that the words had come directly from the kindly lips of the Captain, straight over four thousand miles of sea and land, to put them all in good cheer again.
“Good old Captain Joe!” Jule exclaimed. “How did he know?”
“Oh, anyone would know that such a fool as I am—such a heedless fool—would get any company he traveled with into trouble, and——”
Alex clapped a hand over the speaker’s mouth.
“That will be all for you,” he said.