"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 beard up beyond Collison's
bend.
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