But Clay hated a quitter as much as he hated a coward, and so kept on toward the glaring foothills which lifted straight away to the west. Then voices to right and left told him that he had been trapped!
CHAPTER IV.—“THE PHANTOM BOARDER”
When Alex climbed over the top of the motor boat’s cabin for the purpose of investigating the mystery of the disappearance of the cakes and honey, he saw a dripping lad much smaller than himself sitting close under the open window composedly devouring the pancakes and honey! So great was the haste, or so imperious the hunger, of the boy that he was cramming the cakes into his mouth as if stuffing them into a bag!
In the sheltered position in which he sat he could not be seen from the inside of the cabin, even by one glancing through the open window, unless the person so investigating should thrust his head far out of the opening. He was crowded up against the rear wall of the cabin, in a small pool of water which had trinkled out of his soaked garments. It was evident that he had not long been out of the river.
Alex, lying flat on his stomach on the roof of the cabin, reached down a hand in an attempt to seize the intruder by the hair of the head. Now that he had discovered the purloiner of the breakfast, he was bent on dragging him, a captive, before his chums—with what was left of the cakes in sight!
But the boy did not reach down far enough. Instead of grasping the rusty red hair of the visitor, he merely seized a flat, postage-stamp cap which illy protected his head from the rays of the sun. The lad felt his cap lifting and, thrusting the cakes, covered with honey as they were, into a pocket of his trousers, looked up to see Alex grinning down at him.
To this day Alex insists that he then saw the quickest human movement of his life. One instant the intruder was sitting on the narrow aft deck stuffing pancakes into his mouth. The next he was under water, swimming swiftly down with the current! Alex saw only a twinkle of wet shoes and dripping stockings and the lad was gone!
The boy watched the thief for only a second. Without stopping to warn his chums, without considering the risks he was running, he foolishly sprang down on the aft deck and dove headfirst into the river. It was little wonder that the unusual proceedings at the stern of the boat failed to arouse Captain Joe, for in a minute the boys were under water and far down stream.
About the time Clay and Case were looking for their chum, Alex was, in close pursuit of the pancake thief, crawling out of the river some distance below at a point, in fact, where a sprawling island of sand was almost connected with the shore by a long spit! Before the searchers climbed over on the aft deck, the hot sun had completely evaporated the water the intruder had brought there in his garments, so there were no traces of his ever having been there at all!
Reaching the shore, the fugitive dashed across the tide-leveled beach and sprang lightly over the levee. Alex came, panting, after him, for the swim had been a long one, to meet with the surprise of his life when he half climbed, half tumbled, over the shifting elevation.