CHAPTER XI
THE CREW TAKES A TUMBLE
When Alex and Case reached the deck of the _Rambler_, they found Clayand Jule leaning against the gunwale laughing hard enough to splittheir sides. A searchlight in the latter's hand revealed Captain Joeand Teddy standing by the cabin door, looking around as if inquiringwhat it all meant.
"Well," Alex said, producing his own searchlight, "if there's anythingfunny going on here, you'd better be passing it round."
"Where have you been?" demanded Clay the next moment.
"Been?" repeated Alex. "We've been up in the air!"
"That's no fairy tale, either," Case cut in. "We've been arrested, andreleased, and attacked, and pommeled, and now we strike some kind of aminstrel show. What's been going on?"
"You've been arrested, have you?" laughed Jule, paying no attention tothe question. "Any old time you go away from this boat and don't getinto trouble, I'll wire the news back to Chicago. What did you getpinched for, and how did you get away?"
"We got pinched because of Max," replied Alex, "and we got out of itbecause we came upon a white policeman. We escaped from Max's croniesbecause Captain Joe butted in and chewed up a few. That's some dog,that is."
"And he came back here and helped you out, too, it seems," Case said."I should think he was some dog!"
"And Teddy helped, too," Clay laughed. "We had a show here for alittle while that was worth the price of admission."
"It didn't look funny to me," Jule protested. "I was scared stiff mostof the time."
After Alex and Case had replaced a broken globe on the prow light,told the story of their adventures, and explained that the chief ofpolice had requested the privilege of looking over the boat in themorning, the boys moved the _Rambler_ to a slip farther down the riverand went to bed, Jule remaining on watch for the remainder of thenight. The day had been a busy one and they were all tired.
Alex was out first in the morning, poking along the water front in thecanoe which Max had deserted. After a time Clay came out of the cabinof the _Rambler_ and called to him.
"Got a fish, Alex?"
Alex shook his head.
"The fish won't bite my hook this morning!" he shouted back.
"Well," Clay returned, "there's a gudgeon up on shore that evidentlywants to get hold of your hook, and you with it."
Alex turned quickly and looked up the slip at the foot of which thecanoe lay. He was just in time to see Max and another boy about hissize disappearing behind a collection of goods' boxes.
"Why didn't you shoot him?" Alex called out to Clay. "You saw himfirst. He ought to be shot for what he did last night."
Captain Joe now came out on the deck, yawning and stretching, andelevated his fore feet to the gunwale of the boat. Clay patted him onthe head and pointed to the goods' boxes behind which Max haddisappeared.
"Do you think, Captain Joe," he said to the dog, "that you could goand get a wharf rat this morning? I think there's one behind that pileof boxes. You better go and see, anyway."
Of course the dog did not understand all that was said tohim--although the boys sometimes insisted that he did--but he did knowwhat the pointing finger meant. He was over the gunwale in an instant,tearing up the side of the slip, barking and growling as he went.
"You'll get that dog killed yet," Alex called out to Clay. "That wharfrat of a Max is just like a snake. You don't want to get near himunless you step squarely on his head."
Both boys whistled return orders to the dog, but he would not comeback. He seemed to remember that an old enemy was near at hand andturned the corner of the heap of boxes with a vicious snarl.
The next moment, Max appeared at the top of the heap, fending off thedog with a board he had ripped from a box.
"Call off your dog!" he shouted. "I want to get my canoe. You get outof it, kid, and leave it tied to the slip."
"If you live long enough to see me give you this canoe," Alex laughed,"you'll be older than Noah before you die, and have whiskers fortyfeet long."
"I'll set the police on you!" threatened Max.
"You tried that last night," grinned Alex.
"Come on down here," urged Clay. "I'd like to know what kind of apenitentiary you received your early education in."
"You'd like to have me come down there, wouldn't you?" sneered Max."You think you've got the police on your side, don't you? But I know acouple of detectives that will fix you, all right. You needn't thinkI'm going to let you run away with my canoe."
"How'd you get up the river so quickly?" asked Clay. "Did you dive ineast of the peninsula and swim under water to Quebec?"
"Oh, I got up on a steamer, all right," was the reply, "and I've beenhere waiting for you ever since."
"Do you happen to have a sore head this morning?" taunted Alex. "Youmust have got a bump or two last night."
"You'll get two for every one I got," Max shouted, angrily. "Are yougoing to give me that canoe? I'm going to have it, you know."
Alex deliberately paddled the canoe over to the _Rambler_, secured itwith a light line, climbed to the deck, and set the motors in motion.Max yelled out a few threatening sentences and disappeared.
"We may as well be going up to the old pier," he said, "for this dandychief of police I discovered last night will be down to see us beforelong. He's a right good fellow, that chief is."
"You better hold up a minute," Jule announced,
"Captain Joe is still behind those boxes. If Max could capture him,he'd have him in all the dog fights in Quebec."
But Max was at this time taking to his heels up the street which randown to the slip; and Captain Joe soon made his appearance, lookingvery much discouraged. He was taken on board, dripping with water, andTeddy received quite a bath by approaching him too suddenly. Thebulldog enjoyed that.
The chief of police made his appearance soon after the boys hadpartaken of breakfast, and sat down to talk over the events of thepreceding night.
"This boy, Max," he explained, "is one of the queerest customers wehave anything to do with. He lives in the streets, apparently withoutmoney or friends, and yet he frequently appears at a swell hotelhandsomely dressed and with plenty of money in his pockets. He seemsto have been well educated, as you have probably noticed from hisconversation."
"He talks like a graduate," admitted Clay.
"Yes, and he's one of the sharpest little chaps in the city. We arecertain that he has had a hand in several bold robberies, yet it hasup to this time been impossible to convict him. He is usually defendedby first-class criminal lawyers, and his wharf rat companions seem tobe very desirable witnesses for him."
"Isn't it possible," asked Clay, "that the boy lives along the riverfront for some well defined, perhaps criminal, purpose of his own?"
"I've often thought of that," answered the chief, "for he always takesgreat pains to make friends of the creatures of the underworld. Nowand then he disappears from the city for a few days, or weeks, butalways comes back to his old haunts."
"Of course," Clay said, "you are familiar with the Fontenelle landclaim and the story of the lost charter and the missing familyjewels?"
"Oh, yes," answered the chief, smiling tolerantly, "every man, womanand child in Quebec knows all about the Fontenelle case. Old manFontenelle is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the lost charter.He has spent thousands of dollars searching for it and claims that hewould have discovered it long ago only for the active and criminalopposition of men who might lose heavily if it came again into hispossession."
"And the story of the lost channel?" asked Clay.
"There is a queer story of a lost channel," the chief laughed, "butI'm afraid that it will always be a lost channel."
"But Fontenelle is continually trying to locate it," suggested Clay.
"Yes, but he has no more idea where to look for it than a child in acradle. There is a place down the river where he thinks it might oncehave existed, but he has no clews of any kind."
"Hasn't even a map?" asked C
lay, resolved to know exactly, as far aspossible, what knowledge the Fontenelles had of the lost channel.
"No, not even a map," answered the chief. "I tell you that the familyhas absolutely nothing to go by. Young Fontenelle, who is making mostof the searches now, only goes out to please his father and to givehis friends a pleasant summer vacation."
And so the crude map which had been so mysteriously delivered to theboys was an entirely new element in the case! Who had drawn it, whohad connived at its delivery, who had supplied the information buriedin the legends of more than three hundred years!
Clay puzzled over the matter while the chief chatted with the otherboys, but could reach no conclusion. Again he was tempted to reveal toan outsider the existence of the map, and again he forced himself tosilence when the words were almost on his lips.
"I shall be laughed at if I say anything about the map," he mused."The chief will tell me that many a joke has been played on theFontenelles, and that this was intended to be another. He will tell methat the _Rambler_ was mistaken for the _Cartier_, and that there isno mystery, but only fraud, connected with either one of the messageswe received that night."
"You spoke of the Fontenelle claim in connection with the strangeconduct of this boy Max," the chief finally said to Clay. "Why did youdo that? Can you see any possible connection between the two?"
Then Clay told of the boy's appearance on the _Rambler_, referringalso to the fact that he had been accompanied, apparently, by men whosought to seize the _Rambler_ after it had been beached.
"And Fontenelle claims that these men were not river pirates at all,"Clay went on, "but says they are ruffians sent out to prevent hismaking a thorough search of the district where his father believes thelost channel to have been. In that case, this boy Max might in someway be connected with the enemies of the Fontenelles."
"That is very true," answered the chief, "and I'll keep my eye on himafter this, although I don't take much stock in this lost charterbusiness, at all."
After a pleasant hour the chief shook hands with the boys anddeparted. Then the _Rambler_ was headed upstream again. The boys hadhad enough of Quebec during that one night.
Thirty miles or more up the St. Lawrence from Quebec, the JacquesCartier river enters the St. Lawrence from the north. The boys sightedthe mouth of the stream just before twelve o'clock. At the same momentthey saw a river steamer coming down toward them. The steamer waslarge for one plying above Quebec, and, fearing that the wash from herpropeller would make trouble for the _Rambler_, they edged over to themouth of the entering stream, in front of which lay a great, partlysubmerged sand bar.
The steamer came down, whistling and ringing, and the boys signaledfor her to pass off to the right. Apparently scornful of so small acraft, the pilot kept her headed directly down stream in a coursewhich would have brought about a collision with the motor boat.
The boys swung away toward the sand bar, trusting to good luck to keepthem clear of it.
Just as she came opposite the bar, the helmsman of the steamer didwhat he should have done before, turned the prow sharply to the south.A wall of water from the stern of the boat came sweeping down upon the_Rambler_.
It caught her broadside, and in an instant she was beached high anddry on the bar, lying with her keel exposed and the furniture andfixtures in the cabin and store rooms rattling about like hailstonesin a blizzard.
Tumbling heels over head, catching at the gunwale, scrambling away soas to be beyond reach of the boat if she should go over farther, thefour boys, the bulldog and the bear brought up on the hot, dry sand.
Alex sat up, brushed the sand from his eyes, felt tenderly of a peelednose, and shook his fist at the departing steamer.
"You might come back here and pull us off," he shouted.
The people on the steamer gathered at the rail for a moment to laughand joke at the plight in which they had left the boys, and thenevidently forgot all about it.
"Now, what do you think of that?" cried Jule. "We're thrown out ofwater for the first time in the history of the _Rambler_. Do yousuppose she's busted up much, Clay?"
"Aw, you couldn't bust her up with a cannon," shouted Alex. "We'veprobably lost some provisions, but this river will feed us all right."
As for Teddy and Captain Joe, they turned astonished eyes at the boatwhich they had never seen in exactly that position before and startedto clamber back on board. Teddy shambled clumsily up on deck, butCaptain Joe, evidently changing his mind, returned to the hot sand andlay down.
In a moment a great crash came from on board the motor boat. ThenTeddy came rolling down the incline of the deck hugging close to hisbreast with two capable paws, and taking many a bump in order that hemight save his burden, a two quart can of strained honey.
"That stream," Alex said, "will be just about large enough to clean upthe bear after he has finished with that stolen honey."
"That ain't no stream," said Jule, "That's the lost channel."
Teddy ran away to a distant part of the bar to eat his honey in peace,and the boys ruefully watched the river in hope of rescue.
The Six River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence; Or, The Lost Channel Page 11