"Did you say the dog ate a couple of wharf rats back there?" asked the officer, turning to the diminishing crowd.

"You bet he did!" half a dozen voices cried in chorus. "He's a holy terror."

"I've got a hole in my leg you could push a chair through," one of them shouted. "Arrest him!"

The police wagon now backed up to the curb and the boys stepped inside followed by Captain Joe.

"Here!" questioned the man in charge of the wagon, "are you going in with us, off your beat, and are you going to arrest the dog? He looks like a hard citizen!"

"Not a bit of it!" answered the officer. "He chewed up two wharf rats back there, according to all accounts, and I'm going in to tell the sergeant, and to ask the captain to give him a medal. If he had only killed them, I'd try to get him on the pension list."

"Say," Case remarked, "you seem to be an all-right policeman. I guess you know that bunch back there."

"Every officer in the city knows that bunch," replied the policeman.

"When they're not in the penitentiary, they're making trouble for the force. They ought to get a hundred years apiece."

"What will we get for shooting out the lights?" asked Alex.

"So you did shoot out the lights!"

"We didn't do anything else," declared Alex.

"Say, Mr. Cop, you've seen terriers go after a rat in a pit, haven't you?" asked Case. "Well, that's just the way that gang went after us.

We'd be dead now if Captain Joe hadn't run away from the _Rambler_ and followed us."

"There!" cried the officer clapping Alex on the back, "I've been trying to think of that name ever since I saw the dog. We've got pictures of this dog and the _Rambler_ and a grizzly bear called Teddy pasted up in the squad room. We cut them out of newspapers six months ago when you boys were somewhere out on the Columbia river."

"On the Colorado river," corrected Case. "We found Teddy Bear in a a timber wreck on the Columbia, and he never had his picture taken until we got to San Francisco."

"Is the _Rambler_ down on the river now?" asked the officer, and Case nodded. "Because, if it is," the policeman went on, "some one had better be getting down there! The wharf rats will eat it up before morning, plank by plank!"

"How are we going to get down there if you lock us up?" asked Case.

"You may not be locked up," was the reply.

CHAPTER X

THE MENAGERIE IN ACTION

After the departure of Alex and Case from the _Rambler_, Clay and Jule drew out the two mysterious messages they had received and studied them over carefully.

"What do you think about this lost channel proposition?" asked Jule.

"If a channel ever went through the neck of land as shown by the map, that section must have been visited by an earthquake," Clay laughed.

"There isn't a sign of a channel there. Instead, there's a great high ledge of rock crossing the peninsula, just where the line shows the channel ought to be. It is my private opinion that no water ever crossed that peninsula. There must be some mistake in location."

"The men who made the map might have drawn the line indicating the channel in the wrong place," Jule suggested.

"Well," Clay concluded, "we'll have a look at it when we go back, but what I can't understand is why the map should have been given to the wrong party. If a man had such a map in any way accurate, he would have presented it to Fontenelle in person and demanded a stiff price for it."

"It looks that way to me!" Jule agreed.

There was a volume in the cabin of the _Rambler_ descriptive of the St. Lawrence river from the gulf to Lake Ontario. This the boys brought out and studied diligently until a late hour.

At last Clay arose, yawned, and looked at his watch.

"I wonder why Alex and Case don't return!" he asked. "It can't be possible that that little scamp has gone and lost himself again, can it?"

"Just like him!" snickered Jule. "If I had a dollar for every time he's been lost I'd have all the money I will ever need."

"That's pretty near the truth!" Clay agreed. "However, we've got Captain Joe and Teddy left with us to help look him up."

He leaned back in his chair and whistled to the dog, but no Captain Joe made his appearance. Teddy came shambling into the cabin and held out a paw, suggesting sugar. Clay glanced up at Jule with puzzled eyes.

"Isn't the dog out on deck?" he asked.

The boy hastened out and returned in a moment with the information that the bulldog was nowhere in sight.

"Have you seen him since Alex and Case left?" Clay asked.

"He was here quite a spell after they went away, but he didn't seem contented. All the time I was on deck he was walking back and forth looking longingly over into the city."

"Then he's followed the boys," Clay agreed. "We won't see him again until they return. The only wonder is that Teddy didn't go with him."

"We'll have to get steel cages made for our menagerie," Jule proposed.

"We can't keep a single member of our happy family on the boat when Alex is away. No one else seems to count with them."

The boys were not inclined to sleep, so they sat watchfully in the cabin with the electricity off. Spears of light came from warehouse offices on the pier, and far up the street a great arc light made the thoroughfare almost plain to the eye as day. The roar of night traffic in the city and the wash of the river drowned all individual sounds, and the boys sat in what amounted to silence so far as any noises directly on the boat were concerned.

Somewhere along toward midnight, when they had about given up hope of the immediate return of the boys, there came a quick jar, and the boat swayed as if under the foot of a person mounting the deck.

"There they are, I reckon!" Jule shouted, pa.s.sing to the cabin door which was open to admit the cool breeze of the night.

Clay stepped forward, too, but paused in a moment and drew Alex back.

A crouching figure was now discernible on the prow, and Clay reached for the switch which controlled the lamp there.

With his hand almost to the switch Clay stopped and turned back to where Jule stood, searching his bunk for an automatic which had been placed there. Then the boat swayed again, and there were three figures on the deck instead of one. The light from the street showed only bare outlines. The whole scene was uncanny.

"I don't know what to make of this," Clay whispered. "Shall we turn on the light, or shall we begin shooting right now?"

"If we turn on the light," Jule whispered back, "they'll see us. At present, they undoubtedly believe the boat to be deserted."

"I think they'll run if we turn on the lights," Clay suggested, softly. "They're probably river thieves looking for plunder."

The men on the deck now grouped together, evidently whispering, and trying to decide upon some course of action. In the faint light, they seemed to be hulking, heavily-built men, and the boys were not anxious to come into close contact with them.