The next minute, however, convinced the mountaineer that he had been mistaken in his estimate of the intelligence of the pirates. Half a dozen pistol shots came in quick succession, making little spurts of water on the surface of the river near the stern of the boat. However, Clay and Case were soon climbing, dripping with river water, through the window at the rear of the cabin.
Still watching from the shore, the mountaineer saw Clay creep up to the bridge deck which concealed the motors, keeping down below the level of the gunwale. Bullets from the Hawk continued to spatter about the motor boat, but seemed to do no damage whatever.
As those who have read the previous volumes of this series will understand, the entire exterior walls of the Rambler were sheathed with bullet-proof steel. This fact, it will be remembered, had preserved the lives of all the boys during the voyage to the head waters of the Amazon river.
Directly the watcher saw the anchor, which had been dropped again when the boat had taken her position near the shore, lifted and the next instant, the motor boat went gliding like a shot downstream.
The moonshiner bent his head forward and rubbed his eyes in wonder. It was all new to him, this wonderful speed. His acquaintance with motor boats had consisted almost entirely of a slight knowledge of the large flat-bottomed scows hardly worthy the name of motor boats. When the Rambler darted away at a speed not less than twenty miles an hour, it all seemed to him like magic.
He stood for a moment on the bank watching the little spurts of flame shooting from the Hawk and then turned into the thicket with a chuckle which shook his broad shoulders.
“Sho’,” he exclaimed, “we mountaineers don’t know much about river folks, after all. I never knew there was anything on the face of the earth that could go as fast as that motor boat went.”
He tramped along in the darkness for a long time and then stopped and made a small fire, by the side of which he slept until morning. With the appearance of the day he was out toward the hills, and also forever out of the lives of those on board the Rambler.
“Now, see here,” Clay suggested as the Rambler speeded beyond reach of the bullets from the Hawk, “we can’t long keep this gait with empty gasoline tanks.”
“If we pull in at the landing just below here,” Alex laughed, “we’ll all get pinched. If you leave it to that old store keeper, we’re pirates, and Case and I are little rhinoceros birds sent on ahead to see whether the picking is good.”