“A motor boat?” cried Lockwood.
“Mebbe. Sounded heavy for a motor boat, though. I didn’t look out, and it was too dark anyway to see nothin’.”
“Bob’s house boat, you bet!” exclaimed Ferrell.
“Never mind. She can’t make six miles an hour,” cried Lockwood.
“We’ll never find nothin’ in this dark—an’ there’s fog, too!” Tom murmured. “Well—come along!”
Packed together in the boat, they put out, with Power at the wheel. The glaring lights of the car on the landing went dim. There was a little mist lying low on the water, mixing with the darkness, making obscurity doubly blank. The river surged and gurgled about them almost invisibly, and overhead the stars looked few and lightless.
“Not a bit of use in this,” said Tom, after running a couple of miles. “We can’t see nothin’, and they’ll hear us comin’, and just lay up by the bank and let us go by.”
He stopped the engine. The boat drifted, and in the silence they all listened, but vainly, for the sound of another motor.
“But by daylight they’ll be all the way to Mobile,” Lockwood objected.
“I reckon not. I reckon they’ll be makin’ for the delta. That’s where them river pirates always hides out,” said Fenway.