noon
`` Somewhere on the lake . '' This was all the satisfaction they could get , and bidding the steamboat captain goodbye after paying him off , the Rovers and their friends looked around for some means of getting to Lake Borge , a distance of seven or eight miles . A barge was going through , and they were soon on board . They urged the owner to hurry and offered him big pay , and as a consequence before noon they reached the lake . Here they ran into an old fisherman , who told them that the persons in the launch had had a quarrel with two officers of the law and had sailed off in the direction of Bay St. Louis . `` This is certainly getting to be a long chase , '' remarked Tom . `` First thing we know we 'll be following them all the way across the Gulf of Mexico . ''