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“Go!”

Commodore Wingate of the Hampton Yacht Club gave the word in a sharp, tense voice. The pistol he held extended above his head cracked sharply. The crowds massed upon the clubhouse verandas and in the vicinity broke into hoarse cheers as the tension of waiting was relieved.

“There they go!” came the cry.

Before the puff of blue smoke from the discharged pistol had been wafted away by a light breeze, two eighteen-foot, double-ended whaleboats shot out from either side of the float. For ten minutes or more they had been teetering there, like leashed greyhounds. This was while the final words of instruction were being given. Now the suspense of the preliminaries was over, and the “Spearing the Sturgeon” contest, between the Hawk and Eagle Patrols of Hampton, was on.

Bow and bow the two white craft hissed over the sparkling, blue waters of the inlet. From the clubhouse porch, from the beach, from the sand dunes of the farther side of the Inlet, and from the row of automobiles parked along the beach—which had come from all parts of Long Island—the strivers were cheered.

The afternoon’s program of exciting water sports, arranged by the Scoutmasters of the rival patrols, was now reaching its climax. The packed yacht club and automobile crowds ashore had never seen anything like it before. Among them was our old friend of the first volume of this series—“The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol”—namely, Captain Job Hudgins.

“It’s the beatingest I ever seed afloat or ashore, douse my toplights if it ain’t,” the captain was loudly declaring to a group of cronies.

“Them Bye Scuts did wonders in the west, they tell me,” commented Si Stebbins, the postmaster and village store-keeper. “In my day, though, a bye had ter work an’ not go foolin’ aroun’ in er uniform like them Scuts.”

“What air yer talkin’ about?” put in another voice. “Them Boy Scouts is a good thing fer this town. Didn’t ther newspapers hev all erbout how they beat out a band of cattle rustlers and Injuns in ther west, an’ most got killed doin’ it?”

“They’d hev bin a sight better ter hum minding their own bizness,” opined Jeb Trotter, a village character, but there were few who had watched the exciting afternoon of healthy, wholesome water sports who agreed with him.

As the readers of the “Boy Scouts on the Range” may recollect, it was mentioned in that book that, during Leader Rob’s absence on a friend’s ranch in the west, another patrol—namely, the Hawk—had been formed. On his return, as was natural, the lads of the Eagle had besieged him with proposals to try conclusions with the Hawks. Finally, under Scoutmaster Blake with Wingate’s supervision, a program had been arranged. It included a game of water polo, tub races, a greased pole competition, a race between small cat-boats, and, as a grand wind-up feature, the exciting “Spearing the Sturgeon” game.

Honors were even up to the moment that the two boats dashed away from the float. The laurels of the afternoon would go to the victorious crew. No wonder a cheer went up as the double-enders skimmed over the sparkling water toward a dark object, about six feet in length, near which a canoe, containing the referee, Bartley Holmes, hovered.

The dark object was “the sturgeon.” It was formed of soft wood, and had two realistic eyes painted on the thicker part of its body. It really did look something like a sturgeon, as it lay bobbing about on the water. At the bow of each boat stood a lithe young figure in bathing togs. Each held poised above his head a keen, pointed harpoon. The eyes of both of the spearsmen were riveted, as their crews urged their boats forward, upon the sturgeon’s dark outline.

In the stern of each boat, from which fluttered flags bearing their patrol figures in proper colorings, was poised a steersman, holding a single oar. In the Eagles’ boat the helmsman was Merritt Crawford. In the Hawks’ craft the position was held by a lad named Dale Harding. Skillfully each coxswain directed his flying craft to a point of vantage from which their spearsman could hurl his harpoon to the most effective purpose.

The young harpooners stood tense and rigid as pieces of statuary, every sinew and muscle in their bodies ready for the first “strike.” The Eagles’ harpooner, Rob Blake, the leader of that patrol, was perhaps a little smaller in girth and height than Freeman Hunt, the harpooner and leader of the Hawks, but what Rob lacked in “beef,” he made up in sinuous activity. The fall sun glinted on his tough, brown flesh, as if it had been bronze. “Hard as nails” you would have said if you could have looked him over.

As the green and black “Eagle” standard, and the pink “Hawk” flag began to close in from their different points of the compass, a sharp cry went up from the onlookers.

“K-r-ee-ee-ee-ee!” shrilled the patrol cry of the Eagles from veranda, dune and beach.

Then a breathless hush fell as they waited for the first strike. The referee, in his dark-green canoe, dodged about as actively as a water bug, watching every move closely.

The crews were made up as follows:

EAGLES.	HAWKS.
Spearsman, Rob Blake.	Spearsman, Freeman Hunt.
Helmsman, Merritt Crawford.	Helmsman, Dale Harding.
Oars:	Oars:
Stroke, Tubby Hopkins.	Stroke, Lem Lonsdale.
No. 1, Ernest Thompson.	No. 1, Fred Ingalls.
No. 2, Hiram Nelson.	No. 2, Grover Bell.
No. 3, Paul Perkins.	No. 3, Phil Speed.

A deep-throated roar went up from the shore as Rob Blake’s harpoon glinted in the sunlight and sank quivering into the soft wood of the sturgeon. Instantly Merritt Crawford swung on his oar, bringing the bow of the boat round. But as he did so, there came another flash, and Freeman Hunt’s harpoon sank deep into the quarry, not six inches from Rob’s spear.

“Pull, you Eagles!” came a wild shout from shoreward.

“Now then, Hawks!” roared back the rival contingent.

Both crews were backing water for all they were worth, each seeking to draw the other’s harpoon out of the “sturgeon.” The harpoons were not barbed, which might have made them dangerous, and a determined pull would be likely to dislodge one.

“Give them rope!” shouted Merritt from the stern of the Eagles’ boat, and Rob, as the Hawks started to pull away, paid out his harpoon line rapidly. This maneuver rested his men while it saved his spear from being damaged. The Hawks, on the other hand, were straining their backs with feverish energy. They fairly dripped as they bent to their oars.

“Now then, come ahead easy!” ordered Rob, and the Eagles’ boat began to creep up.

But still the two harpoons stood upright in the “flesh” of the wooden game. Bartley Holmes came scudding up in his canoe.

“Carefully now, boys! Carefully!” he urged, watching things narrowly.

“They’re trying to work up into their base!” shouted Merritt suddenly, as the boats neared the shore.

“Working into their base” meant that the opposing crew would try to land the “fish” at their starting point. In such case, the first heat would go to them, even if the Eagles’ spear was sticking in the sturgeon at the time.

“Back water!” cried Rob suddenly.

The lad, crouching over the water, had been watching every move of his opponents anxiously. He detected signs of weakening in the crew of the Hawks, and gave the signal to reverse the motion of his boat as the Hawks slacked up ever so little.

The line zanged up out of the water, dripping and taut, as Rob’s crew obeyed the sharp order.

As it did so, there was a cry of dismay from the Hawk supporters, when they beheld Freeman Hunt’s spear, which had not sunk as deep as Rob’s, jerked out of the “fish.” Hunt gritted his teeth angrily. He was not a boy who relished defeat at any game, and the yells of the Eagle adherents enraged him.

“Get after them, you dubs!” he bellowed, as the Eagle boat darted off, towing the captured sturgeon behind them.

It was Hunt’s object to overtake them and spear the “fish” again. In this case a fresh struggle, in which he might prove victorious, would ensue.

Everybody was now on the tiptoe of excitement. It was a race for the Eagles’ base. With Rob’s muscular young crew bending to their oars with the regularity of machine-driven mechanism, the boat bearing the green and black standard fairly hissed through the water. Behind her there towed clumsily the black form of the captured sturgeon.

“More steam! More steam!” shouted Hunt, dancing up and down in the bow of the craft, as the Hawk Patrol boys gave way with all their power. But pull as they would, they were no match for the Eagles, who had rested while they were needlessly exerting their strength.

“Eagles!”

“K-r-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee!”

“Go on, Hawks!”

“Don’t give up!”

“Pull, boys! PULL!”

The yells came now in one continuous roar, but they did not affect the result of the first heat at all.

Bang!

The starter’s pistol cracked once more as the Eagles’ whaler, with the sturgeon in tow, shot across the line. But as she did so, Freeman Hunt made a desperate effort, and by some fluke—for the distance between the boats must have been twenty feet,—succeeded in landing his spear in the sturgeon’s tail.

“Back water! Back water!” Dale Harding began yelling, working his steering oar about.

“Too late,” laughed back Rob good-naturedly. “Try again next heat.”

“What do you mean?” shouted Hunt angrily. “My harpoon is in.”

“Yes, but we had crossed the line as you cast it,” yelled back Merritt.

An immediate appeal to Commodore Wingate followed, the referee being hopelessly outdistanced in that wild dash for the float.

“Silence!” he shouted above the confusion of excited boyish voices. Instantly there was a hush, only broken by some excited supporter of the Hawks having it out with an equally heated adherent of the Eagles.

“My decision is that the Eagles win the first heat,” announced Mr. Wingate. “The sturgeon was across the base line before the Hawks harpooned it.”

Instantly Bedlam broke loose.

“He’s right.”

“He isn’t.”

“I saw it myself.”

“Well, you ought to have your eyes seen to.”

These, and a hundred other argumentative remarks, filled the air, but, of course, like most such outbursts, they had no effect on the referee’s decision. There was a glowering, angry look on Freeman Hunt’s face, though, as the two boats changed bases for the next heat.

“We’ll get you this trip,” he grated, as the Eagle’s boat scraped past his craft.

“Say, Hunt, you’re an awful bad loser,” piped up the corpulent Tubby, winking at the others.

“Oh, I am, am I, you tub of lard. Just you wait. We’ll show you. You may have got that heat by a technical decision, but we’ll beat you fair and square this time.”

“Well, we’re both here to try just that,” Rob reminded the angry boy, as the boats bumped and passed.

“The second of the three heats is now on!” bellowed the announcer through his megaphone.

“Are you ready?” demanded Mr. Wingate, as the occupants of both boats anxiously awaited the signal.

“All right here,” announced Freeman Hunt, on whose face an angry light still showed.

“Go ahead, sir,” cried Rob.

The pistol cracked, and the two boats darted forth once more, now on the second lap of their intense struggle for supremacy.