“Holy smoke!” almost shouted Alex. “I make a lost channel!”
“There you are!” Clay began, “and all we’ve got to do is to just look around and find it. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“That will be some cheerful job, too,” Alex commented. “We’ve only got about forty thousand square miles of territory to look over.”
“I think,” Clay said, “that we have the idea, and that is the main thing. The rest is only a matter of detail.”
As the boys sat under the tree, Alex having dropped down to the turf again, a rustling of bushes was heard to the east and they turned in that direction, scanning the thicket closely. Then Alex seized Clay by the arm and pointed away through the underbrush.
“Did you ever see that figure before?” he asked.
“Looks to me to be about the size of Max,” Clay answered. “I wonder if he is watching us, or whether he is only looking in the direction of the Rambler. Anyway, we’d better move.”
The boys shifted their position some yards to the north and crouched down again. The bushes showed motion once more, and they saw the figure they had observed moving toward the bank of the west river.
“He never saw us!” cried Alex. “He is sneaking down on the Rambler.”
“Yes,” Clay replied, “and there are two or three just behind him.”