Rob said nothing, but with burning eyes clung to the wheel and shot the Flying Fish straight ahead on her course.

As they thundered past the hydroplane, the slender craft lay almost motionless on the water, with a great cloud of blue smoke tumbling out of her exhausts.

“Looks like they’ve flooded her cylinder,” said Merritt, observing these signs.

“Kr-ee-ee-ee-ee!”

It was Tubby giving utterance triumphantly to the Eagle scream.

Jack Curtiss straightened up angrily as he heard, his face black and greasy from his researches into the engine.  He shook a menacing fist at the others as they tore by.  The next minute, however, a quick look back by Rob showed that the hydroplane was coming ahead again, and that the engine trouble, whatever it was, had been adjusted.

As they neared the turning point, Rob saw, to his dismay, that the hydroplane was creeping up faster and faster.  It was the last lap, and if Sam Redding’s boat passed them at the stake the race was as good as over.

“Come on, Flying Fish!  Come on!” shouted Rob, as the hydroplane crept ever nearer and nearer to his boat’s stern.

Rob noticed, as he swung a trifle wide of the stake raft, that it seemed to be the intention of Jack Curtiss, who was at the wheel, to swing the hydroplane round the sharp angle of the course inside of the Flying Fish.  Guessing that this would mean disaster to her ill-advised occupants, he waved his hand at them to keep out.

“When we need your advice we’ll send for it.  This is the time we’ve got you!” yelled Jack Curtiss, bending low over his wheel, as he grazed by the Flying Fish’s stern to take the inside course.

At the same instant, so quickly that the boys did not even get a mental picture of it, the hydroplane overturned.

Taking the curve at such a speed and at such a sharp angle had, as Jack had surmised, proved too much for her stability.  Her occupants were pitched struggling into the water.

“Shall we pick them up?” yelled Merritt.

“No,” shouted Rob; “they’ve all got life belts on.  A launch from the club will get them.”

Indeed, as he spoke a launch was seen putting off to the rescue.  The accident had been witnessed from the club, and as the water was warm, the boys were satisfied that no harm would come to the three from their immersion.

But the delay almost proved fatal to the Flying Fish’s chance of winning.  Close behind her now came creeping up the speedy Albacore.

But a few hundred feet before the finish the Flying Fish darted ahead once more, and shook off her opponent amid a great roar of yells and whoops and cheers.  An instant later she shot across the line—­a winner.

“Bang!” went the gun, in token that the race was finished.

“I congratulate you,” said Commodore Wingate, as the boys brought their craft up to the float.  “It was a well-fought race.”