The tender, its engine missing badly, turned its attention to the man in the water, but before it could get to him or near him Sandy, Dick and Larry saw that he caught the tail assembly of the amphibian and scrambling over the fuselage as the craft picked up speed, fell flat on his stomach just behind the pilot’s place and clung tightly while the craft got “on the step” and went into the air in a swift moil of foam and a roaring of its engine.
Outgeneraled, the hydroplane cut speed and swung toward the yacht, followed by the tender.
The race was out of their hands.
“It depends on us!” panted Sandy. “Jeff—get after that seaplane!”
Their pilot needed no instructions.
Kicking rudder and dipping a wing, almost wetting it in the spray of a breaking comber, he flung his airplane into a new line of flight, reversed controls, giving opposite rudder and aileron, got his craft on a stable keel and gave it the gun as he snapped up the flippers to lift her nose and climb after the retreating ’plane.
Far behind them in their swift chase, with every ounce of power put into their engine and their whole hearts urging it to better speed, the Sky Patrol saw the amphibian swerve toward shore and give up the try for whatever that precious life preserver had attached to it.
That something had been cast overboard, tied to the float, was obvious to Larry, Dick and Sandy.
Nothing else explained its employment.
What a chase! Speed was in their favor, because the seaplane, fast as it was, lacked the power of their engine which they learned later that Jeff had selected for that very quality.