Jule pointed, and Case went to the gunwale of the _Rambler_ and looked down upon the fragile canoe in which Max had paddled up the river.
"I didn't know that we were towing it," he said, "but its presence here accounts for Max getting away without being seen or heard. He never stopped to get his boat, and may be swimming under water yet, for all I know. I hope he's clear down at the bottom."
"No danger of one of those wharf rats getting drowned," Fontenelle laughed. "I have seen them remain under water for what seemed to me to be five minutes, and Max is some riverside boy."
"Shoot the canoe over," cried Clay, "and we'll come aboard."
"Well, you see," explained Clay, "when we missed the _Rambler_, we started for the St. Lawrence by the water route, but when ruffians on the bank began shooting, we tied up the boat and took to the thicket."
Case released the line and sent the light canoe spinning over the surface of the river. Clay caught the rope deftly and one by one the boys paddled over to the motor boat. Alex threw himself down on the deck and gazed imploringly up at Case.
"I expected," he said whimsically, "that you'd welcome me on the bank of the river with a pie!"
"The next time you get us into trouble," Case laughed, "I'll meet you on the bank of the river with a club."
The three boys were presented to Fontenelle and Howard and then preparations for breakfast were begun.
"Alex got taken prisoner up in the woods," Jule grinned. "We cut him loose and tied up the cook. We were thinking of getting breakfast there, but we preferred fish and pancakes to lead and gunpowder, so we made a run for the boat."
"I reckon they cut him loose in about ten minutes," Alex replied, "for they seemed to be about three steps behind us all the way to the river, but they didn't catch us."
"Do you think we would better go back after the rowboat?" Case asked, as the boys sat down to a breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes, beans and hot coffee. "We ought not to loose it."
"Look here," Jule said. "We've been sowing rowboats over the world for a year or two. We lost two on the Amazon, one on the Columbia, two on the Colorado and had three smashed on the Mississippi. Now, I think we'd better go back and get this boat."