Captain Joe passed over to the launch, and a long search was made through the owner’s secretary and the drawers and boxes containing documents. The papers were wet, of course, and many of them were badly torn, but the purport of each was by no means doubtful. The great mass consisted of bills, newspaper clippings, personal letters and the hundred and one memoranda made by the captain and owner of a pleasure launch.
“I guess we’ll have to give it up,” the captain said, after a time. “There’s one good thing about it, and that is that Max didn’t meet with any more success than we did.”
“How do you know?” asked Case.
“Because,” answered the Captain, “he would have been off the boat before we ever got to it.”
“Perhaps he wasn’t here as long as you think he was,” Alex put in. “Clay and I saw him up in the woods when we first went ashore.”
The papers were spread out neatly and left to dry, and everything in the drenched cabin placed in as good shape as possible. Then the boys all returned to the Rambler, now nearing her old position in the west river.
Much to the surprise of all on board, there were no signs of the outlaws when the boat came to her old anchorage. Night was falling and there were no indications of hostile influences anywhere. Before darkness settled down over the scene, the boys drew the Rambler a little farther up the stream and prepared to pass a watchful and anxious night.
Alex proposed that he go ashore with the bulldog and make an effort to find Clay, but the proposition was instantly vetoed by the others.
“You’ll get lost yourself,” Case declared, “and we’d have two boys to look up instead of one. I think we’d better all stay on the boat.”
“And that’s good sense, too,” Captain Joe put in. “Clay knows where we are, and he’ll come to us if he can get away. If he doesn’t come during the night, we’ll get out after him in the morning.”