ow you
farther."

"Next time you won't throw me at all!" came from the professed sheriff,
as he made another spring for the yacht.

It seemed that Bruce caught him on the fly. Now the big fellow was fully
aroused, and he swung the stranger over his head and gave him a terrific
heave.

The man whirled through the air, passed clean over the launch, struck
the water beyond and disappeared from view.

At that very moment Frank Merriwell got another crack at Parker Flynn,
who had not learned his lesson by his first experience, and again tried
to board.

Smack!--the blow sounded, and, with a groan, Flynn dropped down into the
launch.

The man who was running the launch seemed satisfied, for he suddenly let
go with the boat hook, and the yacht swung away from her foe.

The self-styled sheriff came to the surface and was pulled aboard the
launch. The ducking seemed to have taken the spirit out of him. He
glared at the yacht, but all his eagerness to board her seemed gone.
Parker Flynn sat up and swore, holding onto his aching jaw. He had not
realized that there was a set of fighters on board the _White Wings_,
although Wat Snell had warned him to that effect. Now he realized that
the yacht could not easily be captured in the manner in which he had
attempted to accomplish the feat.

The meeting of Flynn and Snell came about in this way. Snell, on finding
Frank and his friends were in Boston, had played the spy on the party.
He followed them to the pier the morning they went aboard the _White
Wings_, and he saw the encounter between Frank and Flynn. When Flynn
left the pier, Snell followed and spoke to him. After that it did not
take Wat long to work into the good graces of Flynn.

Infuriated by his failure to obtain possession of the yacht, Flynn
proceeded to get drunk and stay so. On the second day of his spree, he
determined to pursue Merriwell and take the yacht by force, if it could
not be obtained in any other manner. Then he hunted up Snell, and it was
not hard to induce Wat to accompany him.

Flynn knew the "poker gang" in Rockland, and he knew there were a few
desperate fellows among those who made up the gang. He had "dropped his
roll" in Rockland once when he struck the town with an idea in his head
that he was "getting against a lot of jays," and on that occasion he
became friendly with Peter McSwatt and Hunk Gardman. Gardman did not
belong in Rockland, but he came in frequently from an adjoining town to