“And give them a chance to do all the shooting!” replied Alex. scornfully. “I’m not looking for a watery grave in the Mississippi.”
“Well,” Case continued, “if you don’t want to follow them up, just to see what they look like, perhaps we’d better drop down a short distance. If we can’t fight them, we don’t want to feel that they’re right under our noses, waiting for a chance to get us into a hole! I’d rather face a hundred men in the open than know that one was skulking about me in the darkness!”
“This is a fierce old stream for strangers to travel on in the dark!” Alex. said.
“I know it, but——”
Before the boy could finish the sentence a faint jar came, as if some person had caught hold of the anchor chain and given it a pull, or hung his weight on it.
“There’s our friend!” Case whispered. “Now, get ready with your gun!”
In a second, while the boys listened, they heard a hard substance fall on the deck. Alex.’s light flashed around the gunwale, but there was no one in sight.
In the middle of the deck, however, still dripping from the river, lay the leather bag which had held the diamonds, and which had held only burrs and broken crockery when last seen on board the Rambler! Alex. picked it up, found that it was still half full of some hard substances, and shut off the light.
“You saw it?” he asked of Case, as he cuddled down by the boy’s side.
“Of course! The leather bag!”