“What’s your notion now, Captain Joe?” he asked of the dog. “If you can tell me which way to turn to find that motor boat, I’ll give you a chunk of catfish as big as your head when we get aboard.”
Thus urged and bribed, the dog lost no time in turning to the west.
“I think you’re wrong, Captain Joe!” Alex urged.
The bulldog insisted that he was right, and as the boy had no good grounds upon which to dispute his judgment, he followed along after him. It was by no means good walking along the bank, for in many places trees and shrubs had been undermined during high water, and trunks and masses of smaller growth often stretched out into the water.
“I tell you what it is, Captain Joe,” Alex said as they went along. “If you dare to take me back where those saloon pirates are, I’ll advise Teddy to take a bite out of your ear when we get aboard the Rambler again, if we ever do.”
Captain Joe’s only reply was to seize Alex by one trousers’ leg and hustle him along over a mass of boughs which seemed to the boy to be several miles high.
At last, after a great deal of this climbing, Joe stopped on the bank of the lagoon and pointed with his nose out over the water. The two of them must have made considerable racket scrambling along the beach, for just as Joe stopped a soft whistle came out of the darkness.
“Captain Joe,” whispered Alex, patting the dog on the head, “you’re the candy kid! That’s Clay, without the shadow of a doubt. Now you tell him that we want to come aboard.”
As if understanding every word spoken to him by the lad, the dog fawned about for a moment and then uttered a short, sharp bark.
“Come aboard, you runaway!” a voice whispered from the boat.