“Jack Curtiss and Bill Bender are in her!” shouted Rob, “come on, scouts, we’ll get after them while we can.”

With a shout the Boy Scouts ran for the boat and speedily pulled out to the Flying Fish.  Hastily as they executed this move, however, the two in the other boat had had time to head her about and start at top speed for the mouth of the inlet.

“Clap on more sail, my hearties,” roared the captain, almost beside himself with excitement, “I want ter get my hands on them two piratical craft.”

Rob, with a look of grim determination on his usually pleasant face, held the Flying Fish true on her course, but, heavily laden as she was, she could not make her usual speed and the hydroplane soon distanced her.  Jack Curtiss stood in her stern and waved a mocking hand at the Boy Scouts as the light-draft craft shot over the shoals and shallows with case while the Flying Fish had to lose much time and way by threading in and out seeking the deeper water.

“Douse my toplights, I can’t stand that,” bellowed the irate Captain Hudgins.  “I’ll put a shot in that jackanapes’ locker.”

With these words, and before any of the boys could stop him, he rose to his feet and sent a bullet from his ponderous revolver flying in the direction of the fleeing motor boat.  It missed and hit the water near by, sending up a little fountain of spray.

Even at the distance they were the occupants of the Flying Fish could see the fear which this warlike move inspired in the bully and his companion.  They threw themselves flat in their boat till only the hands of Bill, who was steering, were visible.

They need not have feared, however.  The captain’s hasty move brought down on his head Rob’s wrath, though the young leader could not find it in his heart to be really angry with the old man who had been irritated past endurance by the bully’s mocking defiance.

“Shiver my garboard strake,” he exclaimed contritely, when Rob pointed out to him that he might have killed one of the occupants of the hydroplane, “shiver my garboard strake, lad, I saw red fer a minute just like I did that time the Chinese pirates boarded the Sarah Jane Butts in the Yellow River.”

Although there was not much hope of catching the two, Rob stuck to the chase even when he realized the scouts were outdistanced, and in fact kept his attention so closely riveted on the other craft that when there came a sudden jar and jolt and the Flying Fish stopped with a grunt and a wheeze, he realized with a start that he had not been watching the treacherous channel and was once more fast on a sand bar.

With a last shout and a yell of defiance the bully and his companion, who had by now got over their fright, shot out on to the ocean and rapidly vanished.

“There goes our hope of catching those two crooks,” cried Tubby angrily, while the engine of the Flying Fish was set at reverse.  “It’s all off now.  They know that we have rescued Joe and they’ll fly the coop for some other part of the country.”