ten o'clock in the morning
Quite a haul -- if they can get away with it . Maybe you had better notify the authorities . '' `` We certainly will -- if we ca n't find the houseboat , '' said Sam , and then , after a few words more with the ladies and the girls , he started off to rejoin Tom and Dick , and Songbird Powell went with him . It was ten o'clock in the morning when the discovery was made that the houseboat was missing , and by the middle of the afternoon the Rover boys and their chums were certain that the craft had been stolen by Gasper Pold and Solly Jackson . A negro boy who went by the name of Wash -- evidently short for Washington -- gave them more information than anybody else . This boy , who had been fishing near the woods below Shapette , stated that he had seen the two men go aboard the houseboat early in the morning , accompanied by a young man who was a stranger . The three had cast off the ropes , poled the houseboat far out into the stream , and then drifted out of sight down the mighty Mississippi .