“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.”