ne, or the boat'll run into
some other one and set it afire!"

Once more he bravely tried to work his way to the engine. He could not
reach the gasolene cock from where he was. He cast a look ahead, and saw
that his boat was approaching, at swift speed, a knot of other boats,
the steersmen of which were too confused to know what to do. Some were
getting out of the way, but others were in the direct course of the
burning craft.

"What can I do?" Dick asked himself in a hoarse whisper. "I must stop
the boat, or steer it out of the way--but how?"

He could neither reach the engine nor the wheel, for the fire was now
raging in bow and stern. He stood in a little cockpit amidships, where,
for the moment, there were no flames.

Dick looked desperately about him. Nearer and nearer his craft shot to
the boats containing girls in their light summer dresses. Once the
burning motor boat touched the craft in which the young women were their
clothes would envelop them in flames.

"I must stop my boat!" thought Dick, desperately.

Then a brilliant idea came to him. He gave one look at the whirring
fly-wheel of the motor. Then, seizing a heavy monkey wrench he opened
the jaws and fastened it on a boat hook, so that it stood at right
angles to it. Then he thrust the wrench right into the fly-wheel.

There was a grinding, crashing sound, and, a moment later, the whizzing
wheel spokes had caught the wrench, and, with resistless force, had
driven it through the bottom of the craft.

Dick had scuttled his own boat!

CHAPTER XIV

DICK GIVES A PARTY.

Lurching to one side, as the water rushed in through the ragged hole in
the bottom, the boat, with Dick in it, began to lose headway. The water
acted as a brake, and, so large was the opening the wrench had torn,
that, in a few seconds, all danger was past of the burning boat
colliding with other craft, the steersmen of which were too bewildered
to get out of the course.

Foot by foot the scuttled boat sank. The water covered the engine now,
but the motor still kept going, for enough gasolene remained in the pipe
running from the exploded tank to keep it in motion. But the boat was
merely floating along, all speed gone.

"Jump, Dick!" cried Bricktop, who, with the other boys, was swimming
toward shore. "Jump!"

Dick stood up in the boat he had sacrificed to save the lives of others.
The water was up to his knees, and, casting a look about him, he
prepared to leap over