ll
to yourself."

"Why, you thick heads," replied Jimmy, with more force than politeness,
"don't you know that you don't have to have a lightning arrester with a
loop aerial?"

There was a moment's silence while they let this sink in, and then a
sheepish grin stole into their faces.

"Sure enough," owned up Bob. "I knew that too, but I had forgotten it for
the time. I was thinking of the outdoor aerial. Of course on an indoor
aerial there's no need of a lightning arrester. Jimmy, I take off my hat
to you. As the leader of the lynching party said to the widow, after they
had lynched the wrong man, the joke's on us."

"I guess that evens things up," crowed Jimmy gleefully, his usual
good-humor completely restored. "To think of all that waste of good chin
music over nothing," he added mockingly.

"Don't rub it in," admonished Joe. "We'll admit that we're boobs and let
it go at that. Serves us right for thinking of working on a day like this,
anyway. Those people out there have the right idea," he continued,
pointing to a party in a rowboat some distance out from the shore.

"Wish we were out there with them," remarked Herb enviously, as his eyes
followed the boat, which had in it three persons, two boys and a girl.

"A sailboat would be good enough for me," put in Jimmy. "Rowing is too
much like work."

"Or better yet a motor boat like that one coming over from the right,"
said Herb. "In that thing the engine does all the work."

"Those fellows in the rowboat seem to be laboring pretty hard at the
oars," remarked Bob. "They don't seem to be any too expert, and the waves
are pretty rough since that wind sprang up."

"The reason they're pulling so hard is to get out of the way of that
motor boat," declared Joe. "It looks almost as though they were going to
run them down."

"There wouldn't be any excuse for that with the whole broad ocean to
maneuver in," commented Bob. "But, Great Scott!" he cried, jumping to his
feet. "That's just exactly what it's doing. Look! It's right on top of
them!"

The four boys watched with breathless interest the unfolding before their
eyes of what promised to be a tragedy.

The young men in the smaller boat were pulling like mad to get out of the
way of the motor boat bearing down upon them with undiminished speed. The
girl in the stern of the boat was wringing her hands and screaming.

Whether the two men in the motor boat failed to see the rowboat in their
path, or whether the