“I have had that trick played on me before,” retorted Herring in a surly tone.  “How was I to know that it was real?”

“Our boys do not resort to such tricks?” declared the leader of the visiting team warmly, “and I do not think that the Hilltop boys in general can be accused of doing so.”

“I don’t know what you fellows do,” said the other in the same surly tone, “because I have seen very little of you, but I know that that trick has been worked on me before, and I was prepared for anything.  That’s why I did not go to help him.  Why didn’t his own chum do it?”

“You were nearer,” said Dick, and then he went away to see how the other boy was coming along.

Fortunately, he was out of danger, and was doing very well so that it was not necessary to stop the games, but Herring did not again have anything to do and shortly left the camp, and went off into the woods with Holt, leaving Merritt to finish the final of the flat race, losing to the boys from the other camp.

Jack won the race for motor-boats against a considerable fleet, and was the most popular boy in camp, not only on this account, but because of his timely action at the moment of danger whereby a catastrophe was averted.

“That’s only another time when Jack Sheldon has shown his nerve,” declared Harry warmly.  “Why, the very first time I met him he saved a mighty bad situation by his coolness, and he has been doing those things ever since.  Talk about nerve!  Why, he is full of it!”

“Somehow he never seems to lose his head when it is most required,” added Percival, “although to look at him you would not suppose that he had such a command over himself.  It’s when you get to know him that you find these things out.”

“Why, he would as soon jump into a flying machine as get in a motor-boat,” said Billy, “provided there was something to be done.  He is a bird as well as a fish, and just as good at either.”

The sports were closed by a tub race, every one being desirous of seeing Billy Manners in another of these amusing contests.

There were a dozen or more boys in the race, all prepared for a spill in the water, which seemed to be the inevitable end of such affairs.

Billy had a bathing suit of the Hilltop colors, and said as he got into his tub: 

“This is the great race of the submersibles.  Mine is the I.O.U.—–­99, the fastest tub on the river.  If she were fast I couldn’t go—–­fast to the bank, I mean.”

“She’ll be fast on the bottom, at any rate, Billy,” said Harry.

Jack, Percival, and a number of the boys who did not usually take part in such sports, went into this for the sake of making more fun, but the visitors were not asked to enter, as they had not brought their bathing suits, and could not very well get along without them.

The tubs started out, the boys propelling them rapidly with their hands, avoiding collisions when they could, and doing their best to keep afloat as long as possible.