Chapter 7 SEARCHING FOR THE RAMBLER

Case found the walking fairly good and reached New Madrid shortly before noon, having started about 8 o'clock. He procured the supplies for which he had been sent and then sought the hotel and partook of an excellent dinner.

"Now," he thought, "shall I walk back to the Rambler to-night, or shall I remain here and look over the town?"

The question was soon decided, for all there was of the town could be seen in a very short time. At 1 o'clock he started back to the motor boat. At 5 o'clock, just as the sun was setting, he came to the bayou where the Rambler had been anchored.

There was no boat there. The night was falling fast, and the bayou and the river were dimly seen through a slight mist. The boy stood on the bank of the bayou for a long time, studying the situation.

"There's something wrong!" he decided. "The motors could never have been forced into motion with the parts missing! The boys would never attempt to drift down, for the river is still filled with drifting timbers and wrecks of houses and barns.

"And even if they should have decided to change locations, notwithstanding the peril of the undertaking, they would never have gone away without leaving some one here to notify me of the new position!"

Passing on up the bank of the bayou, searching for some sign in the darkness, Case finally came upon the rowboat which Alex. and Jule had left half concealed in a tangle of bushes in a little bay. Before him, then, lay the old house, dim in the night. He had heard the boys talk of visiting the place, and at once concluded that they were there.

He looked over the structure for lights, but saw none. Then he listened, catching in time the sounds which the two boys had noted. He crouched down in a patch of shrubbery and waited, listening for some indication of the presence of his chums.

Directly he heard a shrill scream of fright, then the bushes between his hiding-place and the house were shaken violently, and a small figure darted out, running at top speed and sending a scream into the night at every jump!

"If that isn't Mose," Case thought, "then there are two young negroes with most extraordinary calliope possibilities! He runs like the Old Scratch was after him, and has plenty of wind left to tell how scared he is!" he added.

The small figure came smashing through the shrubbery and finally landed in the thicket where Case had secreted himself. Here he stumbled over a trailing vine and fell forward on his face. Before he could regain his feet Case had him by the arm.

"Mose!" he said. "Keep quiet! You'll have all the pirates in the state steering in this direction! What is the matter?"

"Fo' de Lawd's sake leave dis nigger go!" wailed Mose. "Dar's ghostes in dat ol' house, an' dey's got de boys!"

"Are the boys in there?" demanded Case, giving the frightened lad a gentle shake to bring him back to his senses. "Where is the Rambler?"

"Ah don' know!" gasped the little negro. "Piruts don' got de boat, an' dem ghostes don' 'pear fo' dis nigger!"

"If you don't brace up and tell me what's going on," Case declared, "I'll throw you in the river. Where are the boys?"

Before Mose could reply Captain Joe came dashing through the bushes. He stopped by Case's side and lay down, trembling with excitement.

"If the dog could talk he would tell me what's going on," Case said, reprovingly, to the negro. "Where have you two been?"

Mose, evidently encouraged by the presence of the dog, told haltingly of the attack on the Rambler that morning, of his being thrown overboard, with the dog, of his day of wandering, hungry and afraid, about the old place, and of Captain Joe following the tracks of the boys to the entrance to the house.

He said that he had lain in hiding, afraid to enter, and had kept the dog quiet until it began to get dark, when he had followed Captain Joe to a window from which the sound of voices had issued. The dog had leaped in, after he had pulled away the rotten board, he said, and there he had seen Alex. and Jule, enveloped in a ghostly light, with a white ghost struggling with the dog!

The story was told with many sidelong glances at the shadows which lay heavy on the landscape, for a moon was now struggling through drifting banks of clouds.

As the boy concluded his story, often delayed by his fright, another commotion came from the grounds nearer the old house. Lights flashed from the windows and pistol shots were heard. Getting one sniff of the acrid smell of powder, Mose leaped to his feet and bounded away again. Captain Joe lifted his nose, wrinkled it in derision, and rose to meet two figures which were pounding down the broken walk toward the bayou.

"Alex.! Jule!" called Case. "What's doing?"

"Get a move on!" panted Alex. "Get to the boat! Where did that little coon go?"

"He must be somewhere near the Rocky Mountains by this time," Case replied, falling into the fast pace set by the other boys.

Very soon there were sounds of running feet behind them, and the lads redoubled their efforts to reach the boat before any one else could get to it. Now and then a bullet cut the air close to their ears, but they were not struck.

When they came to the edge of the bayou, Mose had the boat out a rod from shore, and was doing his best to row it across with one oar. The boys did not wait for him to return to the bank, but plunged into the water and waded and swam out, Alex., the last one in, giving the craft a vigorous shove as he crawled over the stern.

Without loss of a minute's time Alex. and Case took the oars and Jule seized the helm. They were soon proceeding down the bayou at a rapid rate of speed, but, fast as they were going, others were moving faster along the bank.

"Come back or we'll fill you full of air holes!" shouted one of the pursuers.

The boys might have been forced to return to the shore only for the fact that at that moment the moon's face was hidden by a mass of clouds. Taking advantage of this, and sitting as low in the boat as possible in order to avoid the bullets which were coming in their direction, the boys made for the mouth of the blind channel, and soon felt the push of the current of the Mississippi.

Before long the sounds of pursuit died out. The old mansion, which stood on the point of land between the river and the bayou, was now in darkness. When the moon came out again it stood silent and solitary in its neglected enclosure. It seemed to the lads that everything that had taken place there must be a dream!

"Now where?" Jule asked, as the boat passed a bend and the house was no longer in sight. "Do we know where we are going, any of us?"

"Where is the Rambler?" demanded Alex. "We ought to have reached it long ago."

Then, briefly, Case repeated the story told by Mose of the capture of the motor boat. There was silence for a moment, for the boys recognized the seriousness of the situation.

There was little doubt in their minds that the Rambler would be wrecked. No boat could drift down that surging river, cluttered with driftwood as it was, without meeting with disaster. And Clay was on board, bound, and helpless in case the worst happened!

"So that is how Mose and Captain Joe happened to come to the rescue," Alex. said. "The pirate threw them off the Rambler! Well, he did a good job when he did it, anyway! But how that coon did run when we made for the window he had opened!"

Mose, nestled in the bottom of the boat, stroking Captain Joe's wet head, grinned and declared that the boys had looked like ghosts.

"It is a wonder the boy and the dog were not discovered in the grounds!" Jule remarked. "I don't see how they came to keep out of sight!"

"I can tell you!" Case put in. "Mose was so afraid that the pirates would come and get him that he lay in the bushes with his face in the dead leaves! Is that right, Mose?" he asked.

Mose had to admit that he was "sho' scared white," and Captain Joe tried to explain, in perfectly good dog talk, that he wasn't frightened a bit, but only lay by Mose to help keep his courage up!

"Well, boys," Alex. said in a moment, "we've got to study out some plan to get to Clay. We can't dodge the issue by talking of something else. What shall we do?"

"I'm for going on down the river," Alex. continued. "The pirates can't run the Rambler up stream, and so we must find her if we keep on going."

"But she has nearly ten hours the start of us," urged Jule.

"I don't think they will go far, as it is risky drifting a boat down now. They will probably go far enough to get out of the zone of pursuit and then tie up, if the boat isn't wrecked before that," he added, gravely.

"That's good judgment!" Case declared.

"We're lucky if we don't get wrecked ourselves," Jule declared, swinging the boat about to avoid a mass of wreckage which lay before her. "When we come to the bend just ahead we're likely to be pushed over to the other shore. See how the current sets that way? We'll have to go some to beat it!"

The current was indeed swift and treacherous. It swept toward the east shore with almost resistless force, and the rowboat was like an eggshell in its grasp.

"Look out for the log ahead!" cried Jule, as the boat swirled around.

But there was more than one log ahead. It seemed that a whole drive of logs, or timbers, had been caught by the flood and whirled down stream. The boys backed water, and Jule did all he could to keep out of the mass, but the current was remorseless.

The boat struck a great timber and the force of the shock and the cracking sound which followed told of an injury to the craft. Mose stood up in the boat, for water was now coming in!

"This seems to be our good-luck night!" Case grumbled, in a sarcastic tone, as the boat lurched against a great log and came near tipping over.

"There's a raft ahead, anyway!" shouted Jule. "We can ride down on that!"

"Until it takes a notion to dump us into the drink!" complained Case.

The boat filled fast, and Captain Joe mounted the prow and looked longingly toward the bobbing timber raft just ahead. From the raft he looked back to the boys.

"I reckon the dog has more sense than we have!" Alex. exclaimed. "We'll have to take to the raft, all right, so here goes."

"Wait for a bit of light!" urged Case. "The moon will be out in a second."

In the darkness which followed the boys could feel the water rising in the boat. The current was pressing the craft down against the timber raft, and the creaking of the hull proclaimed a badly wrecked boat.

"Say," Case called out, "one of you boys get out a light. We've got to make a jump right soon. This is some adventure! What?"

Jule reached for his electric, but Alex. caught his arm.

"There's a light on the Missouri bank," he said, "and it looks to me like the cabin windows of the Rambler were sending it out. Lay low in the dark and drift with the raft!"