Frank Durham was just as practical as he was heroic. While the frightened people in the water were rushing up the beach in a panic, and strollers along the sands stared helplessly toward the scene of the accident, Frank’s quick eye took in the situation—and in a flash he acted.

There was a reason why he was so ready-witted. In the first place he—and also Randy and Pep—had for an entire season been in actual service at the outing resort near their home town of Fairlands. It had been an experience that fitted them for just such a crisis as the present one. Boating on the lake had been the principal diversion of the guests. There had been more than one tip-over in which Frank and his chums had come to the rescue.

In fact, while the boys had regular duties, such as acting as caddies for golfers, as guides and chauffeurs, the proprietor of the resort expected them to keep an eye out at all times for mishaps to his guests. This had trained the chums in a line where common sense, speedy action, and knowing how to do just the right thing at just the right time, would be useful in safe-guarding property and human life.

Frank did not have to tell his companions what to do. They knew their duty and how far they could be useful, as well as their leader. The motor boat was about a quarter of a mile out and was on fire. They could see the flames belching out at the stern. There seemed to be three or four persons aboard. As far as they could make it out at the distance they were, one of the passengers had sprung overboard and was floating around on a box or plank. The others were crowded together at the bow, trying to keep away from the flames.

Randy had dashed down the beach to where there was a light rowboat overturned on the sand. Pep was making for a long pier running out quite a distance, pulling off his coat as he went. Frank had his eyes fixed upon a small electric launch lying near the pier. He did not know nor notice what course his chums had taken. He realized that if help came to the people in peril on the motor boat it must come speedily to be of any avail.

It took Frank less than three minutes to reach the spot where a light cable held the launch against the pier. A rather fine-looking old man stood nearby, glancing through his gold-rimmed eyeglasses toward the beach, as if impatient of something.

“Mister,” shot out Frank, breathlessly, “is this your craft?”

“It is,” replied the gentleman. “I am waiting for my man to come and run me down to Rock Point.”

“Did you see that?” inquired Frank, rapidly, pointing to the burning motor boat.

“Why, I declare—I hadn’t!” exclaimed the man, taking a survey of the point in the distance indicated by Frank. “What can have happened?”

“An explosion, sir,” explained Frank. “You see, they must have help.”

“Where is that laggard man of mine?” cried the owner of the launch, growing excited. “If he would come we might do something.”

“Let me take your launch,” pressed Frank, eagerly.

“Do you know how to run it?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“I don’t. Do your best, lad. You must hurry. The boat is burning fiercely.”

It only needed the word of assent to start Frank on his mission of rescue. There had never been a better engineer on the lake near Fairlands than our hero. He was so perfectly at home with a launch that the owner of the one he had immediately sprung into could not repress a “Bravo!” as Frank seemed to slip the painter, spring to the wheel and send the craft plowing the water like a fish, all with one and the same deft movement.

Frank estimated time and distance and set the launch on a swift, diagonal course. He made out a rowboat headed in the same direction as himself, and Randy was in it. Frank saw a flying form leave the end of the long pier in a bold dive. It was Pep. Frank could not deviate or linger, for the nearer he got to the blazing craft the more vital seemed the peril of those now nearly crowded overboard by the heat and smoke. Besides that, he knew perfectly well that the crack swimmer of Fairlands, his friend Pep, could take care of himself in the water.

It was because the three chums were always together and always on the alert that nothing missed them. Some pretty creditable things had been done by them and that training came to their help in the present crisis.

In the first volume of the present series, entitled “The Motion Picture Chums’ First Venture; Or, Opening a Photo Playhouse in Fairlands,” their adventures and experiences have been given in a way that showed the courage and enterprise that infused them. Frank Durham was the elder of the trio, and it was he who had started a partnership that soon outgrew odd chores about Fairlands and making themselves handy around the lake during the outing season.

Early in the Fall preceding, after a great deal of thinking, planning and actual hard work, Frank, Randy and Pep had become proprietors of a motion picture show at Fairlands. It had been no play-day spurt, but a practical business effort. They had worked hard for nearly a year, had saved up quite a sum, and learning of the auction sale of a photo playhouse outfit in the city, they had bid it in and started the “Wonderland” in the busy little town where they lived.

In this they had been greatly helped by a good-hearted, impulsive fellow named Ben Jolly. The latter was in love with the novel enterprise, liked the boys, and played the piano. Another of his kind who was a professional ventriloquist, had plied his art for the benefit of the motion picture show, delaying the auction sale with mock bids until Frank arrived in time to buy the city outfit.

They had enemies, too, and the son of a Fairlands magnate named Greg Grayson had caused them a good deal of trouble and had tried to break up their show. Perseverance, hard work and brains, however, carried the motion picture chums through. They exhibited none but high-grade films, they ran an orderly place, and with Frank at the projector, Randy in the ticket booth, Pep as the genial usher and Ben Jolly as pianist, they had crowded houses and wound up at the end of the season out of debt and with a small cash capital all their own.

For all the busy Winter, warm weather hurt the photo playhouse at Fairlands. It had been a debated question with the chums for some weeks as to shutting down for the summer months. They finally decided to “close for repairs” for a spell and look around for a new location until fall. Seaside Park was suggested as an ideal place for a first-class motion picture show, and so far prospects looked very encouraging, indeed.

Right in the midst of their business deliberations the incident just related had now come up. All three of the boys had answered the call of humanity without an instant’s hesitation.

Frank forgot everything except the business in hand as he set eyes, mind and nerve upon reaching the burning motor boat in time to be of some practical service. He was near enough now to pretty well grasp the situation. The launch had been going at a high rate of speed, but the expert young engineer set the lever another notch forward, and sent the craft slipping through the water like a dolphin.

The man in charge of the burning boat, Frank saw, had a pan with a handle. He was dipping this into the water and throwing its contents against the blazing after-part of the boat. Some gasoline or other inflammable substance, however, seemed to burn all the more fiercely for this deluge, and the man had to shrink farther and farther away as the flames encroached upon him.

A portly lady was shrieking constantly and waving her arms in a state of terror. It was all that a younger woman, the other passenger, could do to hold her in her seat and restrain her from jumping overboard.

Frank had just a passing glance for the other actor in the scene. This was the fellow he had seen leap overboard when the boat blew up. He was somewhat older than Frank, and having cast adrift a box, the only loose article aboard that would serve to act as a float, he had drifted safely out of reach of the flames.

“He’s a coward, besides being a cad,” involuntarily flashed through Frank’s mind. Then he made the launch swerve, and shouted to the occupants of the motor boat:

“All ready!”

Frank, with his experience of the past, calculated so nicely that the launch came alongside the burning motor boat at precisely the right angle to allow the man in charge of the latter craft to grapple with a boat-hook.

“Quick, Mrs. Carrington,” he spoke to the older lady, “get aboard the launch as fast as you can.”

The woman’s girl companion helped her get to her feet, but she pitched about so that but for a clever movement on the part of Frank she would have gone into the water.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” she screamed, but with the aid of the younger woman Frank managed to get her into the launch, where she dropped in a heap and went into hysterics. Her companion got aboard more quietly.

“You are just in time,” gasped the man in charge of the motor boat. “Don’t risk the flames, but pull away.”

“Yes, there is nothing to be done in the way of putting out the fire,” said Frank.

The man he spoke to was both worried and in pain. His face and hands were blistered from his efforts to shield his passengers from the fire. Just then a howl rang out. It proceeded from the fellow thirty feet away, bobbing up and down on the empty box. This brought the older woman to her senses.

“It is Peter!” she screamed. “Oh, save Peter!”

The paltry Peter began bellowing with deadly fear as the launch was headed away from him. Frank could not feel very charitable toward a fellow who, in the midst of peril, had left friends, probably relatives, to their fate. However, he started to change the course of the launch, when Pep, swinging one arm over the other in masterly progress like the fine swimmer he always had been, crossed the bow of the craft.

“I’ll take care of him,” shouted Pep to Frank, “and here’s Randy in the skiff.”

Frank saw Randy making for the spot, and as Pep grasped the side of the floating box the skiff came alongside.

“Hold on! Stop that other boat,” blubbered the young fellow. “I want to go ashore in a safe rig; I want to get to my aunt.”

“What did you leave her for?” demanded Pep, firing up.

“Huh! Think I want to get drowned?” whimpered the other.

Pep helped the scared youth into the skiff, drew himself over its edge, and directed just one remark to the rescued lad.

“Say!” he observed, indignantly. “I’d just like to kick you.”