A DESPERATE CHANCE
The fire still burned with unabated fury along the shores, and so
great was the heat that the lake was actually getting warmer. It was
a large body of water, fed by ice-cold springs, and as a rule it was
almost too cold for comfortable swimming. But now it had grown
almost tepid, so much so that numerous fish, unused to any but a
cold lake, were killed by the unaccustomed warmth and numbers of
them began to make their appearance on the surface of the lake. The
boys were ravenously hungry, but they had no way of cooking the
fish, and they were far from being hungry enough to try to eat them
raw. In their flight it had not occurred to any of them to take food
along, and now they regretted the oversight, especially Jimmy, who
looked longingly at the beautiful bass and lake trout so close to
his hand.
“Say!” he exclaimed, “wouldn’t one or two of those fellows taste
good, nicely broiled and served hot?”
“There’s plenty of fire on shore,” Joe pointed out. “Just swim over
and poke one or two of those fish up on the bank, Doughnuts, and
they’ll be ready to eat in no time.”
“Well, if you’ll furnish me with a nice asbestos suit, maybe I’ll
try it,” retorted Jimmy, “Don’t forget that I might get cooked even
sooner than the fish.”
“Oh, we’d have to take a chance on that,” said Joe, heartlessly.
“Maybe you’ll have to, but I won’t,” replied Jimmy, with conviction
in his tones. “Go over and broil yourself, if you want to.”
“I will—if I want to,” Joe assured him.
“It’s a wonder you can’t cook the fish with your precious radio
set,” said Buck, with one of his customary sneers.
“Don’t be too sure that we can’t!” exclaimed Bob, as Buck’s words
gave him an idea. “Haven’t we got some German silver resistance wire
on the raft, Joe?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure we have,” returned his friend. “What do you
want it for?”
“Why not make an electric grid out of some of it?” asked Bob. “The
wire is a fine gauge, and the electricity from the batteries will
heat it red hot in a few seconds. We can mount it on a few
insulators and cook as many fish as we like. How does that strike
you, Jimmy?”
“Hooray! Just what the doctor ordered!” responded that individual.
“You rig up the stove, Bob, and I’ll get hold of a couple of fish
and clean them. See which will be ready first.”
“What do you think of the radio set now, Buck?” inquired Herb. “You
thought we couldn’t cook with it, but in about ten minutes we’ll
show you that we can. Maybe after a while we’ll make a fan out of
you. Although it hardly seems possible. It takes brains to
understand radio.”
“Aw, I could understand it if I wanted to,” growled Buck.
But there was little conviction in his tone. He and his cronies had
consistently scoffed at radio, and told everybody who would listen
to them that it was just a fad and not a serious science. And they
had said it so often, that they had actually come to believe it.
Now, in a short space of time, Buck had seen how that same radio set
that he had scoffed at had been utilized to fend off the bears, and
he was about to see it utilized to cook their food. Concerning the
latter he was still skeptical, however. He suspected that the Radio
Boys were just trying to fool him, but this idea was somewhat shaken
when he saw the business-like way in which Jimmy proceeded to scoop
up two fat fish and clean them.
Meanwhile, Bob and Joe had been busy on the raft and had strung
several coils of thin resistance wire across some flat porcelain
insulators. Then they connected one end to one of the storage
battery terminals, and connected the other end to a small knife
switch, which was in turn connected to the other terminal of the
battery. Now everything was ready to test their impromptu stove, and
while the others looked on expectantly, Bob closed the switch.
The result was too good. They had not strung enough resistance wire
to cut down the amperage sufficiently, and a second after Bob closed
the switch the wires sprang to a white heat and a second later one
strand melted, breaking the circuit before Bob even had time to open
the switch.
“Good night!” exclaimed Herb, while Buck Looker viewed this
practical demonstration of electricity’s heating power with
astonishment writ large on his face. “You’d better stick about three
times as much resistance into that circuit. Bob. Those batteries are
sure full of juice.”
“I guess you’re right,” admitted Bob. “If we’d had a pencil and a
table of resistances we could have calculated the right length of
wire to an inch, but since we haven’t any such convenient things
along, we’ll have to get the right length by experiment.”
“Well, I win on speed, anyway,” said Jimmy, complacently. “My fish
are all ready to be cooked, and I don’t see that your stove is ready
to cook them. You’ve got to step lively to beat out your Uncle
Jimmy.”
“Guess he’s right, at that, Joe,” admitted Bob. “He’s hung it on us
this time, anyway. But this stove’s ready for another test now, and
I have a hunch we’ll have better luck this time.”
Once more he closed the switch, and this time the results were all
that could be desired. After a few seconds the resistance wire
glowed a dull red, then a brighter red, and stayed there, showing
that about the proper amount of current was passing through the
circuit. Bob placed three more insulators loosely on top of the
wires to hold the fish a slight distance away from them, and then
the stove was ready.
“Hand over your fish, Doughnuts, and we’ll put a golden brown on
them that would make a French chef envious,” said Joe, and as Jimmy
complied he placed them over the glowing wires.
“If this blamed smoke weren’t so thick we could smell them cooking
pretty soon, and that would make them taste all the better,”
lamented Jimmy.
“Never mind the smoke. How about the heat?” demanded Joe. “It feels
to me as though I must be cooking almost as fast as those fish. I’m
going to take a duck in the lake.”
“You won’t cool off much that way,” Jimmy warned him. “The lake is
lukewarm.”
“No, and you won’t get any cleaner,” added Bob. “Just look at that
black scum over the water!”
The boys had been working under a constant shower of burning sticks
and leaves that dropped steadily into the lake. But by this time
they had become so used to this continual bombardment that they
scarcely noticed it. Hot bits of charcoal hissed against their
clothing, and they brushed them off into the lake with almost as
little concern as they would have shown in brushing away a
troublesome mosquito. They were badly blistered in many places,
especially their hands and faces, but they had become so used to the
stinging pain that the Radio Boys did not bother to remark upon it
now to each other. Buck was the only one of the little party who
complained, and even he did not say very much, being ashamed to when
he saw the others showing such fortitude. They kept their clothing
wet by frequent dips in the lake, and waited with what patience they
could for the fire to burn itself out. There seemed little immediate
prospect of this, however, because the trees surrounding the lake
were all of giant size, and as time passed on the heat seemed to wax
hotter instead of getting less. They were filled with bitterness,
however, when they thought of the bungalow and all the valuable
timber belonging to Dr. Dale and the church, which they believed was
almost certainly on fire by now.
They were roused from these gloomy thoughts by a sputtering and
crackling over their impromptu electric stove, which warned them
that the fish were rapidly becoming cooked. Jimmy took charge of
them at this stage, being a good cook as well as a young man rarely
endowed with appreciation of the good things of the table.
“I’m sorry I haven’t any seasoning for these beauties, but you’ll
have to get along the best you can without it,” he said. “This fish
is done now, and I’ll whack it up the best I can. If there isn’t
enough, we can easily fish one or two more out of the lake.”
In spite of Jimmy’s apology the fish tasted good, although before
they were all eaten the boys were in the water again, seeking relief
from the suffocating heat. After that there was not much they could
do but keep their raft well away from the blazing shore and pray for
rain, which they all did fervently.