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102 sent. Then off our friends hurried, and were soon on the way down the Mississippi once more.

About ten miles below New Orleans is the entrance to Lake Borge Canal, an artificial waterway connecting the Mississippi with Lake Borge, which opens, through Mississippi Sound, into the Gulf of Mexico. The captain of the small steamboat had an idea the men who had stolen the launch were making for this canal, and he was not mistaken. Arriving at the canal entrance, our friends learned that the launch had been taken through very early in the morning.

"Well, this ends the search so far as I am concerned," said the steamboat captain. "I suppose you want to go on somehow."

"Can't we send word to the other end of the canal?" asked Sam.

"Yes, we can telephone to the station there," answered Harold Bird, and this was done without delay.

"Want the launch Venus, do you?" came back over the wire. "She went through some hours ago."

"Where did she go to?"

"Somewhere on the lake."

This was all the satisfaction they could get, and bidding the steamboat captain good-bye after paying him off, the Rovers and their friends