CHAPTER IX.—THE THREE BLUE LIGHTS.
The entire situation on board the Rambler had not been observed from the shore. The boys and the mountaineer had seen only Teddy in the center of the stage, so they had naturally supposed that the swift departure of the pirates had been occasioned by the sudden appearance of the grizzly. Had they been in a little different position, they would have seen Alex and Jule standing in the open doorway of the cabin with threatening automatics in their hands.
“Now, that’s a funny proposition,” the mountaineer deliberated, as Clay and Case clambered to the after deck. “Them pirates are watching the Rambler, and yet they don’t see that the boys are getting possession of her. They must be a stupid lot.”
The next minute, however, convinced the mountaineer that he had been mistaken in his estimate of the intelligence of the pirates. Half a dozen pistol shots came in quick succession, making little spurts of water on the surface of the river near the stern of the boat. However, Clay and Case were soon climbing, dripping with river water, through the window at the rear of the cabin.
Still watching from the shore, the mountaineer saw Clay creep up to the bridge deck which concealed the motors, keeping down below the level of the gunwale. Bullets from the Hawk continued to spatter about the motor boat, but seemed to do no damage whatever.
As those who have read the previous volumes of this series will understand, the entire exterior walls of the Rambler were sheathed with bullet-proof steel. This fact, it will be remembered, had preserved the lives of all the boys during the voyage to the head waters of the Amazon river.
Directly the watcher saw the anchor, which had been dropped again when the boat had taken her position near the shore, lifted and the next instant, the motor boat went gliding like a shot downstream.
The moonshiner bent his head forward and rubbed his eyes in wonder. It was all new to him, this wonderful speed. His acquaintance with motor boats had consisted almost entirely of a slight knowledge of the large flat-bottomed scows hardly worthy the name of motor boats. When the Rambler darted away at a speed not less than twenty miles an hour, it all seemed to him like magic.
He stood for a moment on the bank watching the little spurts of flame shooting from the Hawk and then turned into the thicket with a chuckle which shook his broad shoulders.
“Sho’,” he exclaimed, “we mountaineers don’t know much about river folks, after all. I never knew there was anything on the face of the earth that could go as fast as that motor boat went.”
He tramped along in the darkness for a long time and then stopped and made a small fire, by the side of which he slept until morning. With the appearance of the day he was out toward the hills, and also forever out of the lives of those on board the Rambler.
“Now, see here,” Clay suggested as the Rambler speeded beyond reach of the bullets from the Hawk, “we can’t long keep this gait with empty gasoline tanks.”
“If we pull in at the landing just below here,” Alex laughed, “we’ll all get pinched. If you leave it to that old store keeper, we’re pirates, and Case and I are little rhinoceros birds sent on ahead to see whether the picking is good.”
“Well,” Clay continued, “we don’t have to strain the motors right now, so we’ll keep just enough gasoline burning to give us headway. Perhaps we’ll strike a more hospitable settlement farther down.”
“I don’t believe that old fellow had any gasoline to sell, anyhow,” laughed Case. “If you boys could have seen the rubes fall all over each other when we pulled our automatics, you’d have nearly died laughing!”
“Suppose we stop and see how they feel about the matter to-night,” suggested Alex. “I’d like to drag that constable out of bed!”
“No use of looking for trouble,” Clay advised. “After all, you must remember that those fellows have the law on their side.”
“Yes,” Case declared, “and if they could once get us into jail they’d keep us there for years. They’re likely good and angry about the way we bluffed them before their own townspeople.”
Teddy now came up to where the boys were standing and demanded appreciation for the part he had played in the recapture of the boat. Captain Joe, also, advised the boys of his presence by nipping them quietly on the legs.
“I know what’s the matter with the menagerie,” Alex exclaimed. “They haven’t had any supper. And that makes me think,” he went on, making a dive for the cabin, “that I haven’t had any supper, either.”
“What are you going to get for supper?” Clay asked, following the boy to the cabin door.
“Oh,” Alex replied with a grin which wrinkled his freckled nose, “it’s almost midnight now, and we’ll just get a light little luncheon.”
“You make lots of bad breaks trying to talk the English language,” Case advised. “You mustn’t say ‘luncheon’ unless you have pie. It’s ‘lunch’ when you don’t have pie, and ‘luncheon’ when you do have pie.”
“I said ‘luncheon’, didn’t I?” asked Alex.
“You certainly did,” was the reply.
“Well,” Alex said, “then we’re going to have pie.
“The only kind of pie we can have now,” Case objected, “is fish pie. I’ll go and catch a couple of river perch and you can make a fish pie.”
“Say, look here,” Alex said, shutting the cabin door in Case’s face and talking through the glass panel, “what do you know about pie? I suppose you’ll be wanting me to make a liver pie next.”
“That would be fine fodder!” laughed Case. “I guess you are joking!”
“You’ve forgotten about those canned apples,” Alex insisted. “I’m going to make hot apple pie for our midnight luncheon. And we’re going to have ham and eggs, and potatoes, and soda biscuit, and a whole lot of good things.”
“Go to it!” grinned Case, as he went back on the prow and sat down to watch the river.
The boat slipped steadily down with the current for about an hour before any lights were seen on the Kentucky side. Then Clay got out his map of the river and they all examined it intently.
“Here’s the big bend below Brandenburg,” Case said with his finger on the representation of the river. “Just now, we are free of the big bend, and so that light on the south bank must be at Wolf Creek.”
“Je-rusalem!” Jule exclaimed. “The name sounds fierce, all right!”
“Anyway,” Clay went on, “there’s a little stream enters the Ohio at Wolf Creek, and we can tie up there until morning. If they haven’t got any gasoline there, we can shoot over to the Indiana shore as soon as it gets daylight and see what we can do there.”
The suggested plan was carried out so far as entering the mouth of Wolf Creek was concerned. The first thing the boys did, however, was not to search the few stores the village boasted for gasoline. In the first place, they did not care to awaken the store keepers, as there was no necessity for their going on that night. In the second place, they desired to keep their arrival at the landing as quiet as possible, as some rumor of the show of arms at the landing above might have filtered down the river, in which case they would all be regarded with suspicion.
As soon as the boat was fairly at rest in the mouth of the creek, Alex opened the cabin door and announced in a joyous voice that dinner was served “in the dining-car.”
For the next hour the boys paid little attention to anything save the bountiful meal provided by their chum. Alex’s soda biscuit and hot apple pie proved very attractive to the hungry boys.
“Now then,” Alex declared, walking out on deck after leaving the table, “I’m going to bed for the night!”
“You’ve surely earned a little sleep!” Case grinned. “That’s the best dinner we’ve had in many a day.”
“Oh, I guess I can go some when it comes to cooking,” laughed Alex, “and I’ll wake up in shape to cook another good breakfast in the morning.”
“I’ll be thinking all night what we’re going to have for breakfast,” Clay suggested. “How did you ever come to think of that hot apple pie?”
Before Alex could answer the question, Jule caught him by the shoulder and pointed out to the surface of the river almost directly opposite the mouth of the creek.
“What do you know about that?” he asked.
“About what?” demanded Alex.
The three blue lights!” answered Jule.
The other boys were all attention now, but all declared that they could see no lights whatever. Presently Jule bounded to the top of the gunwale, steadying himself by the roof of the cabin, and looked toward the distant Indiana shore.
“There they are!” he shouted, “There they are! Three blue lights! Now what do you suppose they mean?”
“They’re probably in a boat?” Clay asked, tentatively.
“Nix on the boat!” Jule protested. “They’re just floating right down flat on top of the wet water.”
Clay now vaulted to the gunwale and followed the direction of the boy’s pointing finger. As he did so, a sharp detonation came from the river, echoing down the stream weirdly, and then the lights he had seen only a moment before disappeared from view.
That was the boys’ first experience with the three blue lights!