THE CREW TAKES A TUMBLE
When Alex and Case reached the deck of the _Rambler_, they found Clay
and Jule leaning against the gunwale laughing hard enough to split
their sides. A searchlight in the latter's hand revealed Captain Joe
and Teddy standing by the cabin door, looking around as if inquiring
what it all meant.
"Well," Alex said, producing his own searchlight, "if there's anything
funny 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, and
released, and attacked, and pommeled, and now we strike some kind of a
minstrel show. What's been going on?"
"You've been arrested, have you?" laughed Jule, paying no attention to
the question. "Any old time you go away from this boat and don't get
into trouble, I'll wire the news back to Chicago. What did you get
pinched for, and how did you get away?"
"We got pinched because of Max," replied Alex, "and we got out of it
because we came upon a white policeman. We escaped from Max's cronies
because 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 a
little while that was worth the price of admission."
"It didn't look funny to me," Jule protested. "I was scared stiff most
of 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 of
police had requested the privilege of looking over the boat in the
morning, the boys moved the _Rambler_ to a slip farther down the river
and went to bed, Jule remaining on watch for the remainder of the
night. 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 the
canoe which Max had deserted. After a time Clay came out of the cabin
of 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 evidently
wants to get hold of your hook, and you with it."
Alex turned quickly and looked up the slip at the foot of which the
canoe lay. He was just in time to see Max and another boy about his
size disappearing behind a collection of goods' boxes.
"Why didn't you shoot him?" Alex called out to Clay. "You saw him
first. He ought to be shot for what he did last night."
Captain Joe now came out on the deck, yawning and stretching, and
elevated his fore feet to the gunwale of the boat. Clay patted him on
the head and pointed to the goods' boxes behind which Max had
disappeared.
"Do you think, Captain Joe," he said to the dog, "that you could go
and get a wharf rat this morning? I think there's one behind that pile
of boxes. You better go and see, anyway."
Of course the dog did not understand all that was said to
him--although the boys sometimes insisted that he did--but he did know
what 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 wharf
rat of a Max is just like a snake. You don't want to get near him
unless you step squarely on his head."
Both boys whistled return orders to the dog, but he would not come
back. He seemed to remember that an old enemy was near at hand and
turned the corner of the heap of boxes with a vicious snarl.
The next moment, Max appeared at the top of the heap, fending off the
dog with a board he had ripped from a box.
"Call off your dog!" he shouted. "I want to get my canoe. You get out
of 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 forty
feet 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 a
penitentiary 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 a
couple of detectives that will fix you, all right. You needn't think
I'm going to let you run away with my canoe."
"How'd you get up the river so quickly?" asked Clay. "Did you dive in
east of the peninsula and swim under water to Quebec?"
"Oh, I got up on a steamer, all right," was the reply, "and I've been
here waiting for you ever since."
"Do you happen to have a sore head this morning?" taunted Alex. "You
must have got a bump or two last night."
"You'll get two for every one I got," Max shouted, angrily. "Are you
going to give me that canoe? I'm going to have it, you know."
Alex deliberately paddled the canoe over to the _Rambler_, secured it
with 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 dandy
chief of police I discovered last night will be down to see us before
long. 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 ran
down to the slip; and Captain Joe soon made his appearance, looking
very much discouraged. He was taken on board, dripping with water, and
Teddy received quite a bath by approaching him too suddenly. The
bulldog enjoyed that.
The chief of police made his appearance soon after the boys had
partaken of breakfast, and sat down to talk over the events of the
preceding night.
"This boy, Max," he explained, "is one of the queerest customers we
have anything to do with. He lives in the streets, apparently without
money or friends, and yet he frequently appears at a swell hotel
handsomely dressed and with plenty of money in his pockets. He seems
to have been well educated, as you have probably noticed from his
conversation."
"He talks like a graduate," admitted Clay.
"Yes, and he's one of the sharpest little chaps in the city. We are
certain that he has had a hand in several bold robberies, yet it has
up to this time been impossible to convict him. He is usually defended
by first-class criminal lawyers, and his wharf rat companions seem to
be very desirable witnesses for him."
"Isn't it possible," asked Clay, "that the boy lives along the river
front for some well defined, perhaps criminal, purpose of his own?"
"I've often thought of that," answered the chief, "for he always takes
great pains to make friends of the creatures of the underworld. Now
and then he disappears from the city for a few days, or weeks, but
always comes back to his old haunts."
"Of course," Clay said, "you are familiar with the Fontenelle land
claim and the story of the lost charter and the missing family
jewels?"
"Oh, yes," answered the chief, smiling tolerantly, "every man, woman
and child in Quebec knows all about the Fontenelle case. Old man
Fontenelle is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the lost charter.
He has spent thousands of dollars searching for it and claims that he
would have discovered it long ago only for the active and criminal
opposition of men who might lose heavily if it came again into his
possession."
"And the story of the lost channel?" asked Clay.
"There is a queer story of a lost channel," the chief laughed, "but
I'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 a
cradle. There is a place down the river where he thinks it might once
have existed, but he has no clews of any kind."
"Hasn't even a map?" asked Clay, resolved to know exactly, as far as
possible, what knowledge the Fontenelles had of the lost channel.
"No, not even a map," answered the chief. "I tell you that the family
has absolutely nothing to go by. Young Fontenelle, who is making most
of the searches now, only goes out to please his father and to give
his friends a pleasant summer vacation."
And so the crude map which had been so mysteriously delivered to the
boys was an entirely new element in the case! Who had drawn it, who
had connived at its delivery, who had supplied the information buried
in the legends of more than three hundred years!
Clay puzzled over the matter while the chief chatted with the other
boys, but could reach no conclusion. Again he was tempted to reveal to
an outsider the existence of the map, and again he forced himself to
silence 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 the
Fontenelles, and that this was intended to be another. He will tell me
that the _Rambler_ was mistaken for the _Cartier_, and that there is
no mystery, but only fraud, connected with either one of the messages
we received that night."
"You spoke of the Fontenelle claim in connection with the strange
conduct of this boy Max," the chief finally said to Clay. "Why did you
do that? Can you see any possible connection between the two?"
Then Clay told of the boy's appearance on the _Rambler_, referring
also to the fact that he had been accompanied, apparently, by men who
sought 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 his
making a thorough search of the district where his father believes the
lost channel to have been. In that case, this boy Max might in some
way be connected with the enemies of the Fontenelles."
"That is very true," answered the chief, "and I'll keep my eye on him
after this, although I don't take much stock in this lost charter
business, at all."
After a pleasant hour the chief shook hands with the boys and
departed. Then the _Rambler_ was headed upstream again. The boys had
had enough of Quebec during that one night.
Thirty miles or more up the St. Lawrence from Quebec, the Jacques
Cartier river enters the St. Lawrence from the north. The boys sighted
the mouth of the stream just before twelve o'clock. At the same moment
they saw a river steamer coming down toward them. The steamer was
large for one plying above Quebec, and, fearing that the wash from her
propeller would make trouble for the _Rambler_, they edged over to the
mouth of the entering stream, in front of which lay a great, partly
submerged sand bar.
The steamer came down, whistling and ringing, and the boys signaled
for her to pass off to the right. Apparently scornful of so small a
craft, the pilot kept her headed directly down stream in a course
which would have brought about a collision with the motor boat.
The boys swung away toward the sand bar, trusting to good luck to keep
them clear of it.
Just as she came opposite the bar, the helmsman of the steamer did
what 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 and
dry on the bar, lying with her keel exposed and the furniture and
fixtures in the cabin and store rooms rattling about like hailstones
in a blizzard.
Tumbling heels over head, catching at the gunwale, scrambling away so
as to be beyond reach of the boat if she should go over farther, the
four 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 peeled
nose, 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 laugh
and joke at the plight in which they had left the boys, and then
evidently forgot all about it.
"Now, what do you think of that?" cried Jule. "We're thrown out of
water for the first time in the history of the _Rambler_. Do you
suppose she's busted up much, Clay?"
"Aw, you couldn't bust her up with a cannon," shouted Alex. "We've
probably lost some provisions, but this river will feed us all right."
As for Teddy and Captain Joe, they turned astonished eyes at the boat
which they had never seen in exactly that position before and started
to clamber back on board. Teddy shambled clumsily up on deck, but
Captain Joe, evidently changing his mind, returned to the hot sand and
lay down.
In a moment a great crash came from on board the motor boat. Then
Teddy came rolling down the incline of the deck hugging close to his
breast with two capable paws, and taking many a bump in order that he
might save his burden, a two quart can of strained honey.
"That stream," Alex said, "will be just about large enough to clean up
the 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.