by Roy Rockwood
CHAPTER II
A BIG IDEA
Dan and Billy Speedwell, now seventeen and sixteen years of agerespectively, were, as has been observed, famous in the county as speedexperts. In “The Speedwell Boys on Motorcycles” are related several oftheir first speed trials at the Compton Motordrome and on the road, andin the second volume of the series, “The Speedwell Boys and Their RacingAuto,” is told the winning of a thousand-mile endurance test.
The brothers later obtain possession of a motorboat and adventuresconnected with the great regatta of the Colasha Boat Club are narratedin “The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch,” and in the fourthvolume, entitled “The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine,” the brothers aretwo of an adventurous party that find a submerged wreck and the treasureaboard it.
The boys’ father had been merely a small dairyman and farmer, and theboys had to work hard between school sessions to help him. By certainfortuitous circumstances they had been enabled to obtain motorcycles, aracing auto, and a power launch; but the disposal of the recoveredtreasure had made the Speedwell family quite independent.
Something like twenty thousand dollars had been wisely invested for Danand Billy, and in addition they were able to help their father increasehis business and give the family many luxuries which had before beenbeyond their reach.
As we have seen, however, the Speedwells lived plainly and were busy andindustrious folk. The brothers went to school faithfully and helped asthey had for several years in the delivery of the milk to their father’scustomers in and about Riverdale.
The interest of the two boys in the career of the strange iceboat hadbrought them to a halt on the river road. Dan and Billy were bothdescending the steep bank at breakneck speed before the fall of the mastspelled 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 ayoung lion; but he lacked his brother’s judgment and caution. He wouldhave gone empty-handed to the rescue of the victims of the wreck; butDan saw ahead.
The boys immediately tore down a couple of lengths of rail fence whichhere marked the boundary of some old pasture. With the rails on theirshoulders 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 getaround the open stretch of water.
When the boys leaped down upon the ice they chose a firm spot for theirattempt. 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 thinice. Their principal peril was from holes hidden by the heaped-up snowof the night before.
The weight of this snow had broken down great patches of ice, leavingopen places like this into which the iceboatmen had fallen. And therehad been a very high tide not four hours before, which had raised thelevel 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. Thetwo on the wrecked boat had been very reckless indeed.
This was no time to tell them so, however. Dan and Billy went to work inthe most approved fashion to reach the half-frozen castaways clinging tothe 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-crossfashion 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—knowBarrington Spink, Dan? Lem-lem-lemme present you.”
This introduction seemed a little unnecessary, for the next moment DanSpeedwell seized Barrington Spink by the wrist and fairly “yanked” himout of the water. Young Spink was all but helpless from cold andexhaustion.
As Dan backed away from the hole, dragging Spink with him, Billy swarmedover 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 aboutit, Billy. They certainly for—for—forgot to heat th—this bawth!”
Billy clutched him tightly by the collar and in a few moments he feltDan tugging at his own heels. Barry Spink was lying, panting, on theice—but fast freezing to it, for the thermometer was still far down thescale.
“Come on! come on!” gasped Billy, when the four of them were on theirfeet. “Let’s get where there’s a fire.”
“Y—y—you bet!” agreed Monroe Stevens. “I—I never was so shivery in—inall—all my life!”
Spink could hardly speak. But he moaned occasionally something about thelost iceboat, which he called the _White Albatross_.
“Goodness knows!” chattered Stevens, “we deserved to lose the sillything. 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 allclimbed 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 andBilly 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 aninterest in affairs for the first time, “if it hadn’t been for thatdummy. 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-drownedyouths into the seat and bundled them up in the robe and blankets whileDan started the motor.
“Back to the fire house—eh, Dan?” he asked his brother, as he slid underthe wheel.
“The boiler room at the shops is nearer. They’ll take ’em in and drythem,” 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, andlooking 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,” explainedMonroe; “but it wasn’t anything _human_. And Barry declared it was badluck 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 atlarge,” 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 woodson Island Number One. I bet he’s stopping there,” answered Stevens.
“Nonsense! there’s nothing on that island. No hut, nor any shelter. Bethe 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 onthe 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 stoolsbefore the boilers, they hurried away to deliver the remainder of theirbottled 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 IslandNumber 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 buzzingin 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 whatsort of a bee it is?”
“No-o. Some new idea, I reckon?”
“You bet it is, old man!” declared Billy, with enthusiasm. “And a bigidea, 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. “Upwhere he has lived the winters are long and hard. The rivers and lakesfreeze over usually in November, and stay frozen until February orMarch. And I bet that fellow knows all about iceboating.”
“Don’t you tell him so,” advised Dan, with a grin. “He’s got a swelledhead 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 thefellows 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 thealmanac man promised a real winter this time.”
“And we’re getting a piece of it right now. Jinks! maybe you’ve got abig idea, Billy.”
“Sure I have. And if that chump, Barry Spink, can build a boat as goodas 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 toget the truck under the shed and hustle into school. Got my books withyours? Come on, then,” and the Speedwells hurried off to the academy.
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