CHAPTER XIV
WILL THE RACE BE LOST?
Ralph West hung to the tie-hook at the bow with all his might and main, and succeeded in staying on the Rocket.
Cries went up from the thing in front, which was a motor boat with several men aboard, while Lanky Wallace yelled as loudly as he could to attract Frank’s attention to the fact that Paul Bird had gone over.
But Frank needed no cry, nor warning, to tell him what had happened. As he threw the Rocket so far over to evade a collision with the other boat—and succeeded, missing the other craft by the width of a hair, he saw Paul thrown by centrifugal force into the water.
Frank knew that Paul could swim. But—was it possible that Paul had been thrown with enough force to cast him against the other boat, or might the other boat hit him in the water and thus bring unconsciousness to him?
There was no time to look around. No time to go into reverse, for he would first have to check speed forward. No time to throw a lifeline or a belt. It was swifter, surer action that was demanded at this moment.
All the alertness, the ability to think quickly and to think surely, the mental strength of Frank Allen, this boy who had been through just as tight places on the field and the track, who had several times before thought himself out of a hole, came to his aid now.
Holding the wheel hard over, Frank sent the Rocket on a complete circle, and within a radius of about one hundred yards he brought the boat back again toward the downstream, but above the point where the collision had so nearly taken place.
During this narrow circle, with centrifugal force tending to cast Ralph West off the bow of the Rocket, Lanky Wallace was holding tight to the gunwale, stooping low in an effort to keep his center of gravity close to the boat.