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
