CHAPTER V
WINGED STEEL
There was a moon that week and the nights were glorious. While most ofthe Riverdale young folk were skating in the Boat Club Cove, theSpeedwell brothers were trying out the iceboat each evening, and“learning the ropes.”
The proper handling of a craft the size of the one Dan and Billy hadbuilt is no small art. With the huge mainsail and jib they had rigged,she could gather terrific speed even when the wind was light. She mightbetter have been called an “ice yacht.”
When the ringing steel was skimming the ice at express-train speed, thetwo boys had to have their wits about them every moment of the time. Danhandled the helm and the sheet, while Billy rode the crossbeam forbalance, and to keep the outrigger runner on the ice.
For boys who had entered in semi-professional motorcycle races, and hadhandled a Breton-Melville racing car, the speed gathered under normalconditions by this sailing iceboat seemed merely ordinary. What shewould do in a gale was another matter.
While they had been building the craft just enough rain fell to wash thesnow from the roads; and as the frost came sharply immediately upon theclearance of the rainstorm, almost the entire river surface was likeglass. The cold was intense, and the Colasha froze solid. The icemenwere cutting eighteen inches at Karnac Lake, it was reported.
There were few airholes between the Long Bridge and the lake (Dan andBilly covered the entire length of the river between those two places)and almost no spots where the swiftness of the current made the iceweak. As for the tides—the ice was too firm now to be affected byordinary tides above the Boat Club Cove.
As Bromley’s dock was above the Long Bridge, few of their mates saw theSpeedwells’ craft at all. The Speedwell house was within a shortdistance of John Bromley’s and not many of the academy boys and girlslived at this end of Riverdale.
So what the _Fly-up-the-Creek_ could do was known only to Dan and Billy.They sailed her one night away up the river, past Meadville, the mills,and the penitentiary, and so on to the entrance to Karnac Lake. It wascertainly a great sail.
“Would you believe she’d slide along so rapidly with nothing but a puffof wind now and then?” gasped Billy, as they tacked and came about forthe return run.
“That’s all right,” Dan returned. “But suppose we got off so far and thewind gave out on us altogether? Wouldn’t that be an awful mess?”
“Gee!” exclaimed Billy, laughing. “We ought to have an auxiliary engineon her—eh? How about it, boy?”
“Why, Billy!” exclaimed Dan, “that might not be such a bad idea.”
“Wouldn’t work; would it?” asked the younger boy, curiously. “I onlysaid that for a joke.”
“Well——”
“You’re not serious, Dan?” gasped Billy, seeing his brother’s thoughtfulface.
“I—don’t—know——”
“Whoo!” burst out Billy. “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-drivencraft that would make Money, and Spink, and Burton Poole, and all theothers 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 Antarcticice 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 theair to give her any speed.”
“Not like a propeller in the water, of course. Yet, how do aeroplanesfly?”
“Gee! that’s so.”
“But, suppose we had a small engine on here and a sprocket wheelattachment—something right under the main beam to grip the ice and forceher 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 wehead her around, or the wind dies on us altogether. _Then_ the auxiliaryengine might help—eh?”
“Great!” announced Billy again. “We wouldn’t get becalmed out here onthe river then, that’s sure.”
The boat was creeping down the river right then, failing a strongcurrent of air to fill the canvas. The string of islands that broke thecurrent of the Colasha below Meadville was on their left hand. The lastisland—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 wellwooded, but the boys had often been ashore and had never seen a hut, norother shelter, upon it. Dan shook his head.
“Where would the poor fellow stay? What did he do through that coldrainstorm—don’t see a sign of smoke. He _can’t_ be there, Billy.”
“I know it doesn’t seem probable,” admitted the younger boy. “Butremember that paper ’Dolph found. Something’s buried there, and Dummywas 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 iceboatslid 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. Hedared not neglect the course ahead for long, although the boat was nottraveling fast.
“From fire, of course!” snapped Billy. “What does smoke usually comefrom?”
“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 mistin 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 themanagement of the _Fly-up-the-Creek_. The puff of wind was followed byanother. Soon the current of air became steady and the iceboat whiskeddown 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’tthis thing travel?”
The experience of skimming the crystal surface of the river was yet sonew that Billy gave his whole mind to it, and forgot Dummy and the fainttrace of smoke he had seen against the starlit sky, hovering over IslandNumber One.
This slant of wind that had suddenly swooped down the icy channel drovethe 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 theoutrigger leaped into the air.
As the speed increased, Billy crept out upon the crossbeam so as toballast it. A little cloud of fine ice particles followed the boat andthe wind whined in the taut rigging.
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p; They had no means of telling how fast the boat flew, for it wasimpossible to properly time her by their watches and the landmarks alongthe river bank; but Dan and Billy were quite sure that they had nevercome 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 NumberOne, and Dan remembered its location. Therefore he changed the course ofthe iceboat and she shot over toward the far bank.
Billy shouted something to him, but he could not hear what it was. Theyounger 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 themoment, her light was almost withdrawn. A mist seemed rising from theice itself; but Dan knew that was a mere illusion.
Suddenly the moon cast aside her veil and her full light scintillatedacross the river. Billy uttered a yell and waved a warning arm as hegazed ahead. Dan saw it, too.
It seemed as though a wide channel had suddenly opened right ahead ofthe rushing iceboat—they could see the moonlight glinting across thetiny waves of an open stretch of water.
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