how grateful we are for the way you came to our help. It would have been all up for us if you hadn’t.”

“Yes,” chimed in Tim, “we’ll never forget it as long as we live. It was a mighty plucky thing for you fellows to pull out in the sea that was running. The sight of you coming was the only thing that helped me to hold on. I was just about all in when you reached us. You certainly sent that old boat spinning along.”

“Oh, that was nothing,” disclaimed Bob. “We just happened to be on the spot. Any one else would have done the same thing.”

“But you notice nobody else did do it,” replied Larry. “There were lots of other people on the beach that saw the accident, but you were the only ones that did the hustling. It was a case of quick thinking as well as plucky acting, and we owe our lives to you. I only hope that some time we’ll be able to do something that will show you how we appreciate it.”

“What gets me,” put in Joe, “was the heartless 29 way those fellows in the motor boat acted. They were simply brutes. They ought to have their necks wrung.”

“Yes,” said Herb. “There was no excuse for their running you down in the first place. But after they’d done it, the least they could have done was to turn their boat around and pick you up. We took it for granted that that was what they would do, and we couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw them keep on. Those fellows are nothing less than murderers.”

“I guess you’re about right,” replied Larry. “We counted, too, on their picking us up, and our only thought was to hold on to any floating thing we could grab until they could get to us. And when we saw that they weren’t going to, we just about gave up hope. Both Tim and I are pretty good swimmers, and if we’d been alone might have reached the shore. But there was the girl, and with the water as rough as it was we had a pretty slim chance of bringing her in, so it was a case of living or dying together. And it would have been dying sure enough, if you hadn’t happened to be on the beach this afternoon.

“It would have been especially hard,” he continued, “if the girl had been drowned when she was out on our invitation and under our protection. As for ourselves, it would not have mattered so much. She is an awfully nice girl, and 30 her family and mine have been acquainted for years. My mother and hers used to go to school together. I hadn’t any idea she was down here when I decided to spend a couple of weeks at Ocean Point, but you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was to find that she and her folks were stopping at the same hotel I had picked out. She was a little afraid of the water, but yielded when we urged her to come out for a row, and we were all having a dandy time until that motor boat come along and spoiled everything.”

“And think of what the world would have lost if we’d been among the missing,” said Tim, with a grin. “No more exhibitions of the Canary Bird Snake, otherwise known as Larry Bartlett.”

“Or of the famous buck wing and clog dancer, otherwise known as Tim Barcommon,” laughed Larry.

The radio boys looked at each other in some perplexity.

“I don’t quite get you,” said Bob.