Read Online Clive Cussler by The Adventures of Hotsy Totsy - Free Book Online Page B

wouldn't allow the powerboats to race across the starting line all bunched up. So they started them off one at a time in single file.
    Lacey glanced at a list and numbers of the boats in the race before studying her chart of the river. "You'll have to be careful," she said to Casey. "The river width is less than a football field. Until we reach the delta and head into the bay, the water is quite shallow, rarely deeper than nine feet, so you'll have to stay well away from the banks and steer down the middle."
    "How far to San Francisco?" Casey asked.
    "I'd guess about ninety miles."
    Suddenly, Lacey pointed ahead. "We're next," she said, trembling with growing excitement. Because Casey and Lacey and Hotsy Totsy crossed the halfway mark in twelfth position, they had to wait behind the eleventh boat in line, a bright white boat with a blue stripe up the middle called Boom Voom. The Boom Voom's great rooster tail spray fanned the air and the roar from her engine exhaust crackled. She began tearing down the river chasing the ten boats in front of her.
    The crowd along the shore like around the marina were all shouting encouragement to the two children and dog in the beautiful, shiny mahogany powerboat. Everyone waved and held up signs and cheered them on.
    "Everybody ready?" said Casey, his knuckles gripped around the steering wheel.
    Lacey could only nod, but Floopy barked joyously.
    The official swept the green flag in the air with a great flourish. Casey responded by pushing the pedal to the floor. Hotsy Totsy shot ahead as if fired from a cannon, her propeller whipping the water into froth that swirled in a spreading fan behind her stern. Her bow raised until it was pointing at the horizon as her keel carved through the Sacramento River, which twisted like a snake toward the sea.
    Casey's tight grip on the wheel soon loosened until his fingertips lightly touched the rim as Hotsy Totsy dodged the snags that were the contorted remains of tree trunks and branches rising up out of the water, threatening to tear a great gash in her hull if she crashed into one. Through her magical sense, she knew where the shallow water and the underwater snags were hiding and avoided them. Casey simply nodded and now held the wheel gently as Hotsy Totsy swung around the other race boats.
    Sandbars had to be circled and passed. Many of the sandbars lifted from the riverbed and couldn't be seen under the water surface until it was too late. With her magical sense Hotsy Totsyskirted the unseen hazards.
    "Keep an eye out for rough spots," shouted Lacey. "You can see where the river current churns around shallow water."
    The words no sooner came out of her mouth than Boom Boom, now only fifty yards ahead, lurched to a sudden stop as its hull slammed onto a sandbar. As Hotsy Totsy soared past, Casey and Lacey saw the pilot and his copilot leap into the barely submerged silt and struggle to push their powerboat into deeper water.
    "Now we're eleventh," said Casey as Hotsy Totsy leaned on the side of her hull as she sped around a sharp curve in the river.
    "I judge the next boat to be about thirty seconds ahead," Lacey said, shading her eyes with one hand while staring into the afternoon sun toward the west.
    Casey's fingers lightly tapped the rim of the steering wheel as Hotsy Totsy ducked around a tree stump that was floating in the river current. "We'll catch it," he replied, "right after the next bend."
    The Sacramento River curled east of town. Thousands of people sat comfortably on blankets and in lawn chairs, having a picnic as they watched the race. As one they all stood when they spotted Hotsy Totsy speeding past and flung their arms in the air as if urging her on.
    Roads ran along both banks of the river. Many cars had stopped to watch the boats speed by. The buildings and houses of the city soon dropped behind and the crowds thinned. The land beyond the river- banks became fields planted with what Casey and Lacey, being farm kids, quickly