CHAPTER XIV.—A SWIFT AND PERILOUS RIDE.
It was midnight by Clay’s watch when the boy heard Captain Joe making a great argument out on the deck of the motor boat. He hastily drew on his trousers and a thick coat and stepped out of the cabin.
As he did so the boat rocked frightfully, nearly throwing him from his feet. Seizing hold of the railing, he switched on the prow lamp and sprang to the motors.
There was no doubt in his mind as to what had taken place. The anchor chain had either broken or been cut, and the Rambler was swinging down into the rapids. He called excitedly to the sleepers and set the craft in motion.
The motors responded nobly, but the full power of the machines was not sufficient to change the direction. Stern first, the Rambler was drifting with the swift current He could see the waters on either side foaming over rocks, feel the grating of the sides and bottom of the boat on obstructions beneath the boiling surface.
Case and Alex came bounding out, their eyes half-closed from sleep, their automatics in their hands. For an instant, in a quieter stretch of river, Clay felt the boat spring up stream in answer to the powerful motors, but directly the motion shifted again.
“Put up your guns,” the boy shouted to the others. “You, Case, come here and keep the motors in full action. You, Alex get a pole and stand at the prow. Do the best you can to keep the boat off rocks. She is bound to go down, and we’ve got a fight on our hands. Steady, now.”
“What is it all about?” asked Case, his voice only dimly heard above the rush of waters. “The chain must have been cut!”
Clay did not answer, but took the helm and managed to swing the boat into a smoother bit of water near the east shore. The current swept against the upper side, nearly tipping her over, as she swung, but in an instant the prow turned down stream and the boat righted a little.
“Keep her to the shore!” shouted Case, frantically. “We can never ride those rocks. Keep her toward the east bank, Clay, for heaven’s sake, or it will be all over with us. What are you doing?”
“Full speed ahead!” roared Clay. “If we should strike a rock while headed for either bank we’d go over in a flash! Our only hope is to keep her dead with the current and fight her through!”
That was a wild ride. Time and again the boat grazed great rocks, and more than once Alex’s pole prevented a head-on collision with half-exposed boulders against which the mad waters swirled with terrible force, sending spray high up in the air. Wherever there was a setting of the current Clay led the boat.
Believing that the water would be deeper, the course freer of obstructions, where the current swung, the boy followed the drift for a mile or more without serious mishap. The prow light showed a rush of current the like of which the boys had never seen before.
Now the sweep wound off to the right, now to the left, now it dove straight at a boulder only to turn aside at the last moment because of the water already banked against it. The Rambler was light, and the swift motors gave her steerage way over the current, so in many cases she went over hidden rocks where a boat only drifting would have struck.
Presently a deeper roar than that about them reached the ears of the boys, and they almost held their breath as a high wall of rock loomed up directly in front. The current set hard against this bank and fell away in foam on a curving shore below.
“Now we are in for it!” shouted Case. “If we strike that rock we go to pieces. It seems all clear below.”
Clay turned the prow away from the obstruction, but as he did so the current caught the broadside and whirled her round and round, seemingly a motor boat doomed to destruction after a hard fight for life.
But, when all seemed lost, a kindly fate sent the Rambler against a round rock and held her there, tipping frightfully, until the prow swayed away from the precipice against which the current was pounding with a noise like thunder. Clay saw the opportunity and headed the boat out a trifle and put the whole force of the motors against a rushing eddy which swirled just ahead.
The counter current caught the boat and swung her farther away from the rock, but not far enough away to prevent her coming within a yard of it. A minute later the Rambler dropped into clearer water, and Clay swung her away from the banks of foam which clung to the curving shore below. The rapids were behind!
Clay wiped the perspiration from his face and called to Case to shut the motors down to half power. This done, the boat traveled easily in the direction of an island of rock not far away.
“Shall we land there?” asked Case, speaking at the top of his voice, for the tumbling water still sent up its clamor. “I think I see a ledge where we can get out if we want to.”
“What for?” screamed Alex. “Let’s get away from here.”
Clay motioned to approach the ledge, and in three minutes the boat lay still, with her nose against a low shelf which ran a part of the way round the rocky island and then ascended to the very top.
“The anchor is gone,” Clay said, regretfully, “so we’ll have to hang on here with our hands. That is, unless we can find something to tie to. Look about, Alex and see if there isn’t a peak we can throw a rope about. I’d like to see what there is on the top of this boulder.”
Alex sprang to the ledge and walked a few paces. Then he called back, pointing as he did so. There was a steeple of rock just in front where a rope might be made secure. In a minute the boys were out of the Rambler, and she was tied safe and sound.
“That was a wonder!” were Alex’s first words. “A wonder!”
“Seems good to get my feet on something solid once more!” Case said. “I thought, at one time, that we were out a motor boat, cheated of a ride down the Columbia river. I wonder if there are many places like that?”
“Lots of ’em!” Alex answered, with a wink at Clay. “Most of them have to be passed in balloons! Isn’t that right. Clay?”
But Clay was climbing the winding ledge to the top of the rock which formed the little island and made no reply. While Alex and Case were discussing the peril they had just passed and expressing opinions as to how the Rambler came to be adrift, the boy was mounting to the summit for the purpose of examining the river below, so far as it was possible to do so in the night time, with only the stars in the sky.
Directly he called to the boys, and they went bounding up the ledge, half anticipating something in the line of trouble. They found Clay standing in the middle of an almost round and level space about twenty paces across. On every side, save that where the ledge wound up, there was a sheer fall to the water. It was a very Gibraltar of a rock.
“Look at this, boys,” Clay began, “there’s been some one here within less than half an hour. And there’s been a fire here, too, a fire built of dry sticks brought from the shore. Here are the embers, still alive.”
Alex nosed about the summit for a minute and came back to the others with a paper from which emanated a peculiar odor in his hand.
“They didn’t cook here,” the boy said. “There are no signs of the fire having been used for that purpose, no scraps of food about, so I looked around to see what the fire was built for. I think I have found out. Look at this.”
“This,” was the paper he had found. Clay took it into his hand.
“Do you know what it is?” asked Case. “I think I do.”
“Well, unless I’m very much mistaken,” Clay answered, “this is a bit of paper which once wrapped what we call ‘red fire,’ used for lighting up parades, and also for signaling. The people who made this fire used it to signal from. There is no doubt about that.”
“Then there are two parties about here, perhaps three!” exclaimed Alex. “I think we’d better get into the Rambler and scud for the Pacific ocean. This is getting too thick for me.”
“I wonder if the men who built this fire, and who signaled from this rock, waited here for the Rambler to come down to them a wreck, with her crew drowned and pounded into unrecognizable masses by the rocks? It looks that way to me.”
“They wasn’t waiting here to give us any Christmas presents!” laughed Alex. “Come on, let’s be on our way! I don’t like the looks of things hereabouts, and Captain Joe is calling to us from the boat. Hurry up!”
Clay examined the dragging end of the anchor chain when they returned to the Rambler and discovered that it had been broken by prying one link open. It must have taken a strong tool and a powerful hand to make the break in the massive chain.
“What’s it all about?” demanded Case, as the motors were started once more, and the boat cut away through the water. “What are they after us for, I’d like to know? What are they after Gran for?”
“Answer in our next issue!” grinned Alex, wrinkling his nose at Teddy, who was trying to crawl up the table leg.
“I’m going back to bed,” Case announced, sleepily. “There’s nothing likely to happen, and the conversation carried on by you fellows is irrelevant and immaterial. It will be three hours before daylight shows out on the plains, and four or five before this wrinkle in the world’s surface gets any of it.”
So he crawled off to his bunk and Captain Joe took possession of the sleeping place usually occupied by Alex while Teddy climbed into Clay’s bunk and curled up with his sensitive little nose on his paws.
“I’ll sit up with you to-night,” Alex said to Clay, “for I want to talk with you. First, when are we going to get out of this?”
“I’m tired of mystery,” Clay replied. “Right now we’re headed for the ocean!”