A BIG IDEA
Dan and Billy Speedwell, now seventeen and sixteen years of age
respectively, were, as has been observed, famous in the county as speed
experts. In “The Speedwell Boys on Motorcycles” are related several of
their first speed trials at the Compton Motordrome and on the road, and
in the second volume of the series, “The Speedwell Boys and Their Racing
Auto,” is told the winning of a thousand-mile endurance test.
The brothers later obtain possession of a motorboat and adventures
connected with the great regatta of the Colasha Boat Club are narrated
in “The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch,” and in the fourth
volume, entitled “The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine,” the brothers are
two of an adventurous party that find a submerged wreck and the treasure
aboard it.
The boys’ father had been merely a small dairyman and farmer, and the
boys had to work hard between school sessions to help him. By certain
fortuitous circumstances they had been enabled to obtain motorcycles, a
racing auto, and a power launch; but the disposal of the recovered
treasure had made the Speedwell family quite independent.
Something like twenty thousand dollars had been wisely invested for Dan
and Billy, and in addition they were able to help their father increase
his business and give the family many luxuries which had before been
beyond their reach.
As we have seen, however, the Speedwells lived plainly and were busy and
industrious folk. The brothers went to school faithfully and helped as
they had for several years in the delivery of the milk to their father’s
customers in and about Riverdale.
The interest of the two boys in the career of the strange iceboat had
brought them to a halt on the river road. Dan and Billy were both
descending the steep bank at breakneck speed before the fall of the mast
spelled utter ruin to the ice craft.
“They’ll be drowned, Dan!” gasped Billy, hurrying on the slippery path.
“They’ll be mighty wet—that’s sure,” returned the older boy. “Hold on,
Billy! Let’s take some of these rails. We’ll need ’em.”
It was always Dan who thought the more clearly. Billy was as brave as a
young lion; but he lacked his brother’s judgment and caution. He would
have gone empty-handed to the rescue of the victims of the wreck; but
Dan saw ahead.
The boys immediately tore down a couple of lengths of rail fence which
here marked the boundary of some old pasture. With the rails on their
shoulders they hurried on.
Just then a faint cry for help came from the half-submerged iceboat.
Billy returned a shout of encouragement as he and Dan hurried to get
around the open stretch of water.
When the boys leaped down upon the ice they chose a firm spot for their
attempt. They were able to run right out toward the middle of the river
(which was here at least two miles wide) without venturing upon any thin
ice. Their principal peril was from holes hidden by the heaped-up snow
of the night before.
The weight of this snow had broken down great patches of ice, leaving
open places like this into which the iceboatmen had fallen. And there
had been a very high tide not four hours before, which had raised the
level of the Colasha River even as far up-stream as this point.
Naturally the ice—not yet very thick—had given way in many places. The
two on the wrecked boat had been very reckless indeed.
This was no time to tell them so, however. Dan and Billy went to work in
the most approved fashion to reach the half-frozen castaways clinging to
the outrigger of the ice craft.
“Keep up your pluck! We’re coming!” yelled Billy.
“So—so’s—Christmas!” stammered one of the castaways.
“Crickey!” gasped Billy. “That’s Monroe Stevens—sure’s you live, Dan!”
The Speedwells had cast the fence rails on the ice in a criss-cross
fashion and now Dan was creeping out upon the frail platform thus made,
to the very thin ice. He said:
“If he was going to be hanged the next minute, Monroe would joke. Hi,
there! Save your breath to cool your porridge, Monroe! Who’s with you?”
“B-b-barry Spink,” chattered young Stevens. “Don’t y-y-you know—know
Barrington Spink, Dan? Lem-lem-lemme present you.”
This introduction seemed a little unnecessary, for the next moment Dan
Speedwell seized Barrington Spink by the wrist and fairly “yanked” him
out of the water. Young Spink was all but helpless from cold and
exhaustion.
As Dan backed away from the hole, dragging Spink with him, Billy swarmed
over them both and seized upon Monroe Stevens.
“Hold tight, old man,” he cried. “We’ll get you out.”
“All—all right,” chattered Stevens. “But d-d-don’t be too-o-o long about
it, Billy. They certainly for—for—forgot to heat th—this bawth!”
Billy clutched him tightly by the collar and in a few moments he felt
Dan tugging at his own heels. Barry Spink was lying, panting, on the
ice—but fast freezing to it, for the thermometer was still far down the
scale.
“Come on! come on!” gasped Billy, when the four of them were on their
feet. “Let’s get where there’s a fire.”
“Y—y—you bet!” agreed Monroe Stevens. “I—I never was so shivery in—in
all—all my life!”
Spink could hardly speak. But he moaned occasionally something about the
lost iceboat, which he called the _White Albatross_.
“Goodness knows!” chattered Stevens, “we deserved to lose the silly
thing. I knew better than to try her out to-day—and I—I told you so,
Barry.”
“I didn’t know there was an iceboat on the river,” said Dan, as they all
climbed the steep hill to the road and the waiting motor car.
“It—it was the only one on the Colasha,” mumbled Spink.
“We’ve been building it on the q. t., Dannie,” exclaimed Stevens,
grinning. “And she certainly could travel some. We got one on you and
Billy that time.”
“You seem to have got one on yourselves,” returned Dan, grimly.
“Didn’t you know enough to wait till the river really froze over,
Money?” questioned Billy, with some disgust.
“Aw, that Barry!” grumbled young Stevens. “He was crazy to try her out.
And we got up this morning before sun-up. Sure, she whizzed——”
“We were watching you come down the river,” admitted Dan.
“Say! couldn’t she travel?” exclaimed Stevens.
“You bet,” agreed Billy. “How far up the Colasha did you go?”
“Went around Island Number One——”
“And we’d been all right,” snarled Barry Spink, who seemed to take an
interest in affairs for the first time, “if it hadn’t been for that
dummy. He put the jinx on us.”
“The jinx!” exclaimed Billy, laughing.
But Dan had noticed something else, and he repeated, curiously:
“‘Dummy?’ What d’ye mean—dummy?”
They had reached the motor-truck and Billy hustled the half-drowned
youths into the seat and bundled them up in the robe and blankets while
Dan started the motor.
“Back to the fire house—eh, Dan?” he asked his brother, as he slid under
the wheel.
“The boiler room at the shops is nearer. They’ll take ’em in and dry
them,” advised the older Speedwell.
“I—I don’t care where in the world you take us as—as long’s it’s _hot_,”
wailed Barrington Spink.
“But how about this ‘dummy’?” demanded Dan, of Monroe Stevens.
“Why, we had stopped at Island Number One and were repairing the rudder,
when along come this feller who couldn’t talk.”
“Couldn’t talk?” cried Billy, waking up to the coincidence, too, and
looking at Dan, amazed. “Why! there must be two of them.”
“Two what?” queried Stevens.
“You called him a dummy. Is he really dumb?”
“He mumbled something or other when we asked him to help us,” explained
Monroe; “but it wasn’t anything _human_. And Barry declared it was bad
luck to meet a dummy.”
“And so it is!” snapped young Spink. “Doesn’t _this_ prove it?”
“Funny about there being two fellows who act like dummies being at
large,” remarked Dan to Billy.
“I should say so,” agreed the younger brother. “Say, Money! where’d
_your_ dummy go to when he wouldn’t help you chaps?”
“He was comin’ across from the mainland, and he went up into the woods
on Island Number One. I bet he’s stopping there,” answered Stevens.
“Nonsense! there’s nothing on that island. No hut, nor any shelter. Bet
he was going right along across the river.”
“Well, he didn’t go on while we were up that way, for when we got the
_White Albatross_ fixed, we sailed around the island and come down on
the far side—and the snow lay all along the edge of the island there,
and there wasn’t a footprint in it. Oh! here’s the shops. My goodness!
won’t it be—be go-o-od to get next to—a fire,” chattered Stevens.
When the Speedwells had seen the shivering castaways humped upon stools
before the boilers, they hurried away to deliver the remainder of their
bottled milk. On the way to Colonel Sudds’s Dan said:
“What do you think of this ‘dummy’ they talk about, Billy?”
“Funny. Wonder if he’s the twin of the one we’ve got at our house?”
“Question is, _have_ we got him at our house?” returned Dan,
thoughtfully.
“Pshaw! the folks wouldn’t let him leave so soon. If he was at Island
Number One so early, he must have left our house soon after we did,”
declared Billy. “And that isn’t troubling me,” he added.
“What is?” asked his brother, smiling.
“Why—it’s no trouble. Not really. But there is something that is buzzing
in my head, Dan.”
“I knew there was a bee in your bonnet,” chuckled his elder.
“Oh, you did? How smart you are! But I don’t believe you can guess what
sort of a bee it is?”
“No-o. Some new idea, I reckon?”
“You bet it is, old man!” declared Billy, with enthusiasm. “And a big
idea, too.”
“Let’s have it,” urged the older Speedwell.
“Well! you know about this Barry Spink; don’t you?”
“I know he’s not long in Riverdale.”
“Yes. But where he comes from?”
“Up the Hudson somewhere.”
“Crickey! that’s just it,” cried Billy, with rising excitement. “Up
where he has lived the winters are long and hard. The rivers and lakes
freeze over usually in November, and stay frozen until February or
March. And I bet that fellow knows all about iceboating.”
“Don’t you tell him so,” advised Dan, with a grin. “He’s got a swelled
head as it is—I can see that.”
“Never mind, Spink. That isn’t exactly what I mean—not what _he_ knows.
But he and his busted iceboat have put something into my head, old man.”
“Out with it, boy.”
“It’s just this: Let’s go in for an iceboat ourselves. Let’s get the
fellows of the Outing Club interested—and maybe some of the girls,
too—Mildred, and Lettie, and some of the others. And we’ll have races,
and all that.”
“If the ice gets thick enough and ‘stays put,’” suggested Dan, slowly.
“You said yourself last night,” Billy declared, quickly, “that the
almanac man promised a real winter this time.”
“And we’re getting a piece of it right now. Jinks! maybe you’ve got a
big idea, Billy.”
“Sure I have. And if that chump, Barry Spink, can build a boat as good
as that _White Albatross_, what’s the matter with us building a better?”
“Now you’re talking,” agreed his brother, with growing enthusiasm.
“Hustle now, Billy! there goes the first bell. We’ve only just time to
get the truck under the shed and hustle into school. Got my books with
yours? Come on, then,” and the Speedwells hurried off to the academy.
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