But that gave the seaplane an advantage.

Quick to take it, dipping a wing and kicking rudder, the seaplane’s pilot swerved a little, leveled off, and set down in a smother of foam, and on his wing also a man climbed close to the tip!

“Where’s the one who was on the amphibian wing?” Larry wondered.

“In the water, spilled by our wash,” he decided.

He had no time to pay attention to that situation. The imminent culmination of the race chained his gaze.

“The tender is almost there—oh!” gasped Sandy, “the seaplane must be rammed by the tender!”

But the yacht’s boat, with its motor hastily started, and cold—lost way as the engine sputtered and died!

Slackening speed, the seaplane raced along until, with a hand clinging to a brace and his body leaning far over the dancing waves, its passenger on the wing scooped up the life preserver.

Almost immediately the seaplane began to get off the water.

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 

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