“Don’t,” moaned Townsend from his place on the ground.  “This is too much——­”

“It isn’t enough!” Pee-wee shouted.  “The race is better because it’s longer—­it stretches out—­it’s an extensible race—­I invented it——­”

“What on earth is the cause of it?” laughed one of the girls.

“Extra—­extra—­ex—­ex—­ex—­extra high tide caused by the r—­r—­rain,” shrieked Townsend, hardly able to get the words out.  “This is the cli—­cli—­climax of Eas—­Eas—­Easter vac—­c—­c—­c—­c—­cation!”

Amid screams and catcalls from the shore an official launch came chugging up the course.  By that time the two canoeists had given themselves up to laughter and sat shaking as their canoes drifted.  Only the island continued merrily upon the flood tide.

“Called off?” somebody called from the shore.

“Certainly it’s called off,” said the official in the launch.  “This was supposed to be a race, not a game of tag.”

“Come on! Come on!” screamed Pee-wee from the departing isle.  “Hurrah for Bridgeboro High!  Come on, you can go around us!  If a man can—­listen, I’ve got a dandy argument—­if a man can shoot a bird on the wing a race like that is just as good—­you can encircle an island on the wing too! Come on! Come on!  It’s a new kind of a race!  A lot of girls paid ten cents to see it!  Come on, go around us!”

“Oh, gracious, goodness, we’ve had our money’s worth,” moaned one of the girls; “we’re not complaining.”

“It’s like a movie play,” screamed another.

“It’s a very move—­m—­moving drama,” stammered Townsend.

“And all for ten cents,” said one of the girls.

“They’re not coming!” Pee-wee shouted.  “We won the race!  We weren’t in it but we won it anyway.  That feller in the launch is crazy!  It was a chase and a race all in one—­it was a chase race—­I invented it and he went and spoiled it all.”

Time and tide wait for no man.  Up the swelling river, out of the voice range of the hooting throng, farther and still farther from the madding crowd, sailed Turning Post Island, alias Merry-go-round Island, alias Isle of Desserts, alias Alligator Isle, alias The Earthly Paradise.

Other motor-boats, manned by astonished officials and bearing committees, chugged up to where the island had been and a flotilla of rowboats and canoes hovered thereabouts while their occupants inspected curiously the place where the official turning point with its crowded grandstand had been.  But the official turning point had vanished, though the voice of our hero could still be beard up beyond Collison’s bend.

And still Townsend Ripley lay prone and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Your money will be refunded, of course,” he managed to say to the several occupants of the grandstand.  “You see we had a heavy rain all night and——­”

“Oh, don’t speak of returning our money,” one of the girls laughed.  “We really ought to pay you more.”