“What did he say about that furniture?” grinned Jule. “You’ve got the nerve!”
“He never mentioned it,” was the reply. “Say,” the lad went on, “I believe that chap is all to the good, after all! He seemed to think the smash act was funny.”
During the afternoon Case and Mose had caught a large fish and Chet had succeeded in bringing down a wild duck, so the cooking of supper was an elaborate affair. Then Clay made light biscuits and coffee, and fried potatoes, and the boys were as happy as well-fed boys with no one to “boss,” usually are, except that they missed Chet.
After supper they discussed the proposition of waiting there a day in the hope of finding the runaway boy, but it was finally decided that he could find them easier than they could find him, so they started the motors and went on toward the Gulf.
The early part of the night was bright, so the boys ran down about twenty miles, as the river ran, and then tied up below a “tow-head” which stuck up out of the water below an island of good size. They found it necessary to take this precaution always, for the wash of large steamers passing up and down would have rattled things in the Rambler, if the motor boat was not capsized.
At midnight the sky became overcast with threatening clouds and the wind blew in fitful gusts. There seemed to be no danger of their being disturbed by visitors that night, but all the same they thought best to station a watchman, and Case volunteered to keep awake and see that “no one flew away with the boat,” as he expressed it.
Somewhere about two o’clock in the morning, the boy, who was having hard work keeping awake, heard the puff and bellow of an approaching steamer, toiling up against the strong current. Almost at the same instant he felt a jar, as if the boat had been struck by floating driftwood. He switched on the prow light to see what was doing, but quickly extinguished it as the steamer came up and a heavy rowboat dropped away from her!
[CHAPTER XVI—WHAT DROPPED ON DECK]
“I guess my turning on that light started something!” the boy mused, as he darkened the small electric globe in the cabin and sat down to await developments. He kept just inside the cabin door at first, for the wind was cold and searching.
For a few moments he could hear the working of oars and the push of the current on an advancing boat, and then all was silent save the sighing of the wind and the wash of the river, still burdened at times with floating wreckage. It seemed to him that the boat which had slipped away from the steamer had anchored somewhere near the Rambler.