"_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 heard 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_." "We can't take any more," Pee-wee shouted. "You--you get the ride for nothing--it's thrown in--because I said free transportation and a scout has to keep his word. Even if we float miles and miles we can't take another cent----" "We may be rovers but we're not profiteers," moaned Townsend. "If--if we don't drift to shore by supper time," said Pee-wee, "you get your dinner too just like when an ocean steamer is delayed in a fog; they give you your dinner, so don't you worry because you're with scouts and when it gets to be six o'clock I'll make a hunter's stew." At this there was a sudden noise as of horror and anguish and before our voyagers realized what was happening, Townsend Ripley had rolled off the island into the water. CHAPTER XXX ABSENCE MAKES THE ISLAND QUIET "It's all right," Townsend sputtered as he crawled ashore. "I was just thinking of something sad; I feel better now. It was one of the finest races that I never saw."