The Speedwell Boys and Their Ice Racer: or, Lost in the Great Blizzard. Roy Rockwood
“You’re off on a cloud again, Dan, old boy! Whoever heard of a motor iceboat? Zing!”
“Hits you hard; does it?” chuckled Dan.
“I – should – say! Wouldn’t it be ‘some pumpkins’ to own an engine-driven craft that would make Money, and Spink, and Burton Poole, and all the others that are going in for iceboating, look like thirty cents?”
“I admire your slang, boy,” said Dan, in a tone that meant he didn’t admire it.
“Well, but, Dan! you know that idea is preposterous.”
“You’re wrong. There are sleds, or boats, being used on the Antarctic ice right now, propelled by gasoline – an air propeller and a series of ‘claws’ that grip the ice underneath the body of the sledge.”
“Air propeller?” cried Billy. “Why, there isn’t resistance enough in the air to give her any speed.”
“Not like a propeller in the water, of course. Yet, how do aeroplanes fly?”
“Gee! that’s so.”
“But, suppose we had a small engine on here and a sprocket wheel attachment – something right under the main beam to grip the ice and force her ahead?”
“Great, Dannie!” exclaimed the younger boy, instantly converted.
“Well – it might not work, after all,” said Dan, slowly.
“Let’s try it!”
“We’ll see. Where we lose headway on this Fly-up-the-Creek is when we head her around, or the wind dies on us altogether. Then the auxiliary engine might help – eh?”
“Great!” announced Billy again. “We wouldn’t get becalmed out here on the river then, that’s sure.”
The boat was creeping down the river right then, failing a strong current of air to fill the canvas. The string of islands that broke the current of the Colasha below Meadville was on their left hand. The last island – or, the first as they sailed up the river – was the largest of all, and was called Island Number One.
As the iceboat rumbled down stream Billy asked, suddenly:
“What do you think about that dummy, Dan? Suppose he’s over yonder?”
“On the island?”
“Yep.”
Dan viewed the high “hogback” of the island curiously. It was well wooded, but the boys had often been ashore and had never seen a hut, nor other shelter, upon it. Dan shook his head.
“Where would the poor fellow stay? What did he do through that cold rainstorm – don’t see a sign of smoke. He can’t be there, Billy.”
“I know it doesn’t seem probable,” admitted the younger boy. “But remember that paper ’Dolph found. Something’s buried there, and Dummy was left to guard it.”
“How romantic!” chuckled Dan.
“Well! isn’t that so?” demanded the younger lad.
“We don’t know what that line of writing really means,” said Dan.
“Huh! It’s plain enough. Oh, Dan!”
The younger boy had turned again to look at the island as the iceboat slid out of its shadow.
“What’s the matter now?” demanded Dan.
“Look there! Up – up yonder! Isn’t that smoke?”
“Smoke from what?” demanded Dan, glancing over his shoulder quickly. He dared not neglect the course ahead for long, although the boat was not traveling fast.
“From fire, of course!” snapped Billy. “What does smoke usually come from?”
“Sometimes from a pipe,” chuckled Dan. “I don’t see anything – ”
“Above the tops of those trees – right in the middle of the island.”
“I – don’t – see – ”
“There! rising straight against the sky.”
“Why – it’s mist – frost – something,” growled Dan. “It can’t be smoke.”
“I tell you it is!” cried Billy. “What else could it be? There’s no mist in such frosty weather as this.”
“But – smoke?”
“Why not?” cried Billy. “I bet that Dummy is over there.”
“Then he must have his campfire in the tops of the trees,” chuckled Dan. “Now where’s your smoke, Billy?”
A puff of wind swooped down upon them. Dan had to attend to the management of the Fly-up-the-Creek. The puff of wind was followed by another. Soon the current of air became steady and the iceboat whisked down the river at a faster pace.
“Where’s your smoke now?” Dan repeated.
“Wind’s whipped it away, of course,” grinned his brother. “Gee! can’t this thing travel?”
The experience of skimming the crystal surface of the river was yet so new that Billy gave his whole mind to it, and forgot Dummy and the faint trace of smoke he had seen against the starlit sky, hovering over Island Number One.
This slant of wind that had suddenly swooped down the icy channel drove the craft on as though it really were a bird winging its way homeward. The steel rang again, and at every little ripple in the ice the outrigger leaped into the air.
As the speed increased, Billy crept out upon the crossbeam so as to ballast it. A little cloud of fine ice particles followed the boat and the wind whined in the taut rigging.
They had no means of telling how fast the boat flew, for it was impossible to properly time her by their watches and the landmarks along the river bank; but Dan and Billy were quite sure that they had never come down the stream any faster in their power boat than they did now.
There was a piece of “pebbly” ice inshore, not far below Island Number One, and Dan remembered its location. Therefore he changed the course of the iceboat and she shot over toward the far bank.
Billy shouted something to him, but he could not hear what it was. The younger boy pointed ahead, and Dan stooped to peer under the boom.
The moon had drawn a thin veil of cloud over her face and, for the moment, her light was almost withdrawn. A mist seemed rising from the ice itself; but Dan knew that was a mere illusion.
Suddenly the moon cast aside her veil and her full light scintillated across the river. Billy uttered a yell and waved a warning arm as he gazed ahead. Dan saw it, too.
It seemed as though a wide channel had suddenly opened right ahead of the rushing iceboat – they could see the moonlight glinting across the tiny waves of an open stretch of water.
CHAPTER VI
GETTING INTO TRIM
Ready as the Speedwell boys were in most emergencies, here was an occasion in which it seemed that disaster could not be averted. That is the principal peril of iceboating; it is impossible to stop a craft, once she is under fast way, within a reasonable distance.
It was too late to drop the sail and hope to bring the Fly-up-the-Creek to a halt before her nose was in the open water. For the instant Dan Speedwell’s heart seemed to stand still.
There flashed across his mind the remembrance of how that other iceboat – the White Albatross – had gone into the open river. Had he and Billy not been on the spot, as they were, Money Stevens and Barrington Spink would doubtless have been drowned.
And here was another such accident. The iceboat flew right down to the wide channel where the moonbeams glanced upon the ripples —
But she kept right on in her flight, and to Dan’s amazement the runners rumbled over the apparently open water with an increasing roar!
“Crickey!”