"I'm generally in shape for whatever comes my way," laughed Matt, getting up and yawning. "Right now's when I'm going to turn in, and you can bank on it that I'll sleep like Rip Van Winkle up in the Catskills. You'll see something surprising in the morning, fellows! If the Sprite, after she gets warmed up, can't do her mile in better than three minutes, I'm no prophet."
"If she does that," jubilated McGlory, "we're apt to have the Dart lashed to the mast."
"Good night," said Matt.
The parting word was returned, and the king of the motor boys followed the wall of the dark boathouse past the well and on by the workbench to his cot.
Inside of two minutes he had turned in, and inside of three he was in dreamless slumber.
How long Matt slept he did not know, but it must have been well beyond midnight when he was awakened. He was half stifled, and he sat up in his cot struggling for breath.
A yellowish gloom was all around him, and a vague snap and crackle came to his ears.
Suddenly, like a blow in the face, the realization came that the smothering fog was smoke, and that the flickering yellow that played through it was flame.
"Fire!" he yelled, springing from the cot. "Lorry! McGlory! Where are you?"
Matt's only answer was the whirring rush of the fire and the weird snapping as the flames licked at the wood. For a moment the heat and the smoke almost overcame him, and he reeled backward against the wall.