ynnie.

"My goodness! how exciting!" cried Grace Hedges.

"And we'll actually win the prize your father offered us, Bess!" gasped
Percy Havel.

"I don't see that _we_ have had much to do with it," said Frank.
"Wyn made the discovery."

"What is for one is for all," declared Wynnie. "But we won't win Mr.
Lavine's prize unless the boat is raised and the silver images are
delivered to Dr. Shelton. If those men get hold of the boat----"

Suddenly one of the boatmen--a long-legged fellow with a cast in one eye
and lantern jaws sparsely covered with sandy whisker--came forward to
the bow of the bateau and poised himself for a leap to the diving float.

"Keep off!" Dave warned him, swinging his paddle over his head. "You
jump over here and you'll catch this where Kellup caught the hen--right
in the neck! You let us alone and we'll let you alone."

The boatman told him, in no very choice language, what he would do to
Dave when he caught him; but the captain of the Busters did not appear
to be much shaken.

"Hold, on, Eb!" yelled the other boatman. "I'll run that raft down and
spill 'em all off."

"You try it and you'll likely smash your boat," shouted Dave. "I warn
you."

Mina Everett began to cry softly, for the suggestion of a pitched battle
between the boys and the boatmen frightened her dreadfully. Bess began
to grow excited.

"Aren't those men just _mean_? I wish I had something to hit them
with--I do! I believe I'll get out on the raft with _my_ paddle."

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," said Grace. "I think the boys are as nice
to us as they can be."

Suddenly, while the attention of all the others was held by the exciting
situation on the raft, Frank Cameron cried out:

"Who's this coming? Oh, girls! isn't that Polly? Look, Wyn!"

Wyn almost overturned her canoe in her eagerness to back out of the
group and whirl her canoe about that she might see. Down upon the scene
was bearing one of the larger power boats from the other end of the
lake.

"It's Dr. Shelton's _Sunshine Boy_!" cried Percy Havel.

"And that _is_ Polly Jolly in the bow," exclaimed Wyn. "Hurrah!"

She drove her paddle into the water and sent her canoe driving for the
approaching motor boat.

"Polly! Polly!" she called, long before the boatman's daughter could
hear her.

But Polly recognized her just the same, and waved her hand; there was a
gentleman pacing the deck, too, who came to lean on the rail and look at
the flying canoe.