else as if he had something on his mind."

"Anyway, he comes highly recommended," said Sam.

When they came out on the deck they found Captain Starr sitting on a
bench smoking a corncob pipe.

"She is in fine shape and I congratulate you, captain," said Dick,
pleasantly.

"Thank you," was the short answer.

"You will be ready to have us taken down the river as soon as we get
our things on board?"

"Yes, sir."

"Confound him," thought Dick. "Why doesn't he say something else? He is
a regular automaton."

"By the way, captain," put in Tom, "have you noticed a stranger
watching the _Dora_ the last night or two?"

At this question Captain Starr leaped to his feet, allowing his corncob
pipe to fall to the ground.

"What made you ask that question?" he demanded.

"We have an enemy, named Dan Baxter. We suspect he is following us and
is spying on us."

"Yes, I have seen a young fellow around half a dozen times. In fact, I
caught him on the houseboat once."

"You did!" cried Dick. "What was he doing?"

"Going through the stuff in the living room."

"What did you do to him?"

"I yelled at him, demanding to know what he wanted. As soon as he heard
me he ran ashore and disappeared."

"Did you try to find him?"

"No, because I didn't want to leave the houseboat alone."

"Did you see him last night--while our colored man was here?"

"I saw somebody, but it was too dark to make out exactly who it was."

CHAPTER XVIII

ON BOARD THE HOUSEBOAT

After questioning Captain Starr as closely as possible all three of the
Rover boys came to the conclusion that it must have been Dan Baxter who
had visited the _Dora_ on the sly.

"I don't like this at all," said Sam. "He is going to make trouble for
us--no two ways about that."

"The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to get away without delay,"
said Tom. "He won't find it so easy to follow us then."

"I'm going to throw him off the scent," said Dick.

"How?"

"By pretending to go to one place, while we can really go to another."

"That's a scheme."

A small tug had been chartered to tow the houseboat, and the captain of
this was ordered to be ready for moving at eleven o'clock.

"We shall go to Camdale first," said Dick, naming a place about forty
miles away.

"All right, sir--wherever you say," said the tug commander.

Returning to the hotel, the boys found the others finishing breakfast
and sat down to their own. They said the _Dora_ was