“Not quite yet,” Clay insisted. “The scene mustn’t close just yet. The audience wants to know what the three blue lights are going to do to the Rambler.”
The boys were not long kept in waiting in this regard. The rowboat, sunk almost to the guards under the weight of four men and a boy, swept up to the Rambler. Directly all were on the deck of the motor boat. Alex dancing excitedly up and down when he was not waltzing over the deck with the white bulldog.
“Why don’t you let us in on that?” demanded Jule from the bank.
“Oh, there you are!” shouted Alex springing up on the gunwale. “We thought you boys had gone and got lost. Wait a minute, and I’ll row the boat over to you.”
The lad dropped into the rowboat with a tunk, and soon had his wondering companions on the deck of the motor boat. What they saw there added, if possible, to the surprise of the previous five minutes.
Four men, two of whom Alex recognized as the men who had stolen the boat, lay tied hard and fast on the deck, and four other men, two of whom had visited the camp at the cove during the forenoon, were standing over them with guns in their hands. The prisoners seemed to be trying to the best of their ability to conciliate their stern-faced guards.
“We didn’t know that you had an interest in the outfit,” one of the prisoners was saying. “Those boys rammed our steamer, and we were bound to get even with them.”
“It’s hands off the boys!” exclaimed Peck sternly. “What do you think we ought to do with them?” he asked turning to his companions.
“We ought to stretch their necks!” was the fierce reply.
“I wouldn’t mind assisting at a necktie party,” Peck answered, “but, under the circumstances, I think we’d better not become too prominent in any such society event. You three men pitch them over into the old houseboat and drift along the river until you come to a Government steamer. Then turn them over as outlaws and return on the Government steamer if it’s going upstream to the cove. If it’s going downstream, get the first upboat you can.”