“Give them rope!” shouted Merritt from the stern of the Eagles’ boat, and Rob, as the Hawks started to pull away, paid out his harpoon line rapidly. This maneuver rested his men while it saved his spear from being damaged. The Hawks, on the other hand, were straining their backs with feverish energy. They fairly dripped as they bent to their oars.
“Now then, come ahead easy!” ordered Rob, and the Eagles’ boat began to creep up.
But still the two harpoons stood upright in the “flesh” of the wooden game. Bartley Holmes came scudding up in his canoe.
“Carefully now, boys! Carefully!” he urged, watching things narrowly.
“They’re trying to work up into their base!” shouted Merritt suddenly, as the boats neared the shore.
“Working into their base” meant that the opposing crew would try to land the “fish” at their starting point. In such case, the first heat would go to them, even if the Eagles’ spear was sticking in the sturgeon at the time.
The lad, crouching over the water, had been watching every move of his opponents anxiously. He detected signs of weakening in the crew of the Hawks, and gave the signal to reverse the motion of his boat as the Hawks slacked up ever so little.
The line zanged up out of the water, dripping and taut, as Rob’s crew obeyed the sharp order.
As it did so, there was a cry of dismay from the Hawk supporters, when they beheld Freeman Hunt’s spear, which had not sunk as deep as Rob’s, jerked out of the “fish.” Hunt gritted his teeth angrily. He was not a boy who relished defeat at any game, and the yells of the Eagle adherents enraged him.
“Get after them, you dubs!” he bellowed, as the Eagle boat darted off, towing the captured sturgeon behind them.
It was Hunt’s object to overtake them and spear the “fish” again. In this case a fresh struggle, in which he might prove victorious, would ensue.
Everybody was now on the tiptoe of excitement. It was a race for the Eagles’ base. With Rob’s muscular young crew bending to their oars with the regularity of machine-driven mechanism, the boat bearing the green and black standard fairly hissed through the water. Behind her there towed clumsily the black form of the captured sturgeon.
“More steam! More steam!” shouted Hunt, dancing up and down in the bow of the craft, as the Hawk Patrol boys gave way with all their power. But pull as they would, they were no match for the Eagles, who had rested while they were needlessly exerting their strength.