WINGED STEEL
There was a moon that week and the nights were glorious. While most of
the Riverdale young folk were skating in the Boat Club Cove, the
Speedwell 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 had
built 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 might
better have been called an “ice yacht.”
When the ringing steel was skimming the ice at express-train speed, the
two boys had to have their wits about them every moment of the time. Dan
handled the helm and the sheet, while Billy rode the crossbeam for
balance, and to keep the outrigger runner on the ice.
For boys who had entered in semi-professional motorcycle races, and had
handled a Breton-Melville racing car, the speed gathered under normal
conditions by this sailing iceboat seemed merely ordinary. What she
would do in a gale was another matter.
While they had been building the craft just enough rain fell to wash the
snow from the roads; and as the frost came sharply immediately upon the
clearance of the rainstorm, almost the entire river surface was like
glass. The cold was intense, and the Colasha froze solid. The icemen
were cutting eighteen inches at Karnac Lake, it was reported.
There were few airholes between the Long Bridge and the lake (Dan and
Billy covered the entire length of the river between those two places)
and almost no spots where the swiftness of the current made the ice
weak. As for the tides—the ice was too firm now to be affected by
ordinary tides above the Boat Club Cove.
As Bromley’s dock was above the Long Bridge, few of their mates saw the
Speedwells’ craft at all. The Speedwell house was within a short
distance of John Bromley’s and not many of the academy boys and girls
lived 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 was
certainly a great sail.
“Would you believe she’d slide along so rapidly with nothing but a puff
of wind now and then?” gasped Billy, as they tacked and came about for
the return run.
“That’s all right,” Dan returned. “But suppose we got off so far and the
wind gave out on us altogether? Wouldn’t that be an awful mess?”
“Gee!” exclaimed Billy, laughing. “We ought to have an auxiliary engine
on 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 only
said that for a joke.”
“Well——”
“You’re not serious, Dan?” gasped Billy, seeing his brother’s thoughtful
face.
“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-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.
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