The lone figure in the first boat dropped out of sight. Whether he had been hit or not the boys could not tell. But the craft did not slacken speed. Instead, it still continued to race madly through the waves. But the pursuers rapidly drew closer until at last the boats were running side by side. They were so close together that it appeared as if a collision were imminent. “The whole crowd of them will be killed if they aren’t careful!” muttered Frank. Then, just when it seemed that both boats must crash together, the pursuing craft, as though it had given up the chase, veered abruptly away and headed out toward the middle of the bay. The speed of the other boat decreased. The roar of its exhaust became intermittent. “Engine trouble!” suggested Joe. But there was more than engine trouble. With startling violence, a sheet of flame leaped high into the air from the motorboat. There was a stunning explosion and a dense puff of smoke. Bits of wreckage were thrown high into the air, and in the midst of it all the Hardy boys, horrified, saw the figure of the man they had noticed before, as he was hurled into the water. The whole boat was swiftly ablaze. Hardly had the wreckage begun to fall back into the water with spasmodic patterings and splashes than the craft was in flames from bow to stern. “Look!” shouted Frank. “He’s still alive!” The man of the boat had been killed by neither the rifle shot nor the explosion. They could see him struggling in the water not far from the blazing craft. His head was a dark oval above the water and he was slowly trying to swim ashore. “He’ll never make it!” gasped Joe. “We’ll have to try to save him!” answered his brother. CHAPTER V THE RESCUE The Hardy boys knew that they had no time to lose. It was evident from the struggles of the man in the water that he was not an expert swimmer. So far, he had not seen the boys, but they could hear him shouting for help, possibly thinking, however, that it was in vain, for it was a lonely part of the bay and the nearest farmhouse, outside of the deserted Polucca place, was more than half a mile down the road. “Quick!” shouted Frank. “I see a rowboat up on the shore.” His sharp eyes had discerned a small boat almost hidden in a little cove some distance away at the bottom of a steep declivity that was the beginning of the cliff. It could not be reached by going along the shore, and the boys saw that they would have to go along the high ground and then descend to it, for a huge rock that jutted out of the deep water cut the cove off from the more open part of the beach.