CHAPTER XII
THE “FOLLOW ME”
The danger of a smash and overturn was imminent. The heavy bobsled was plunging toward the obstruction, and there was neither time nor space to steer clear of the branch.
The girls, breathless from the swift ride, could scarcely scream; and Billy was himself speechless. But Dan did not lose his head.
In a trice he whipped out his claspknife, sprung open the blade, and just before the collision occurred he cut the kite-string.
The huge kite turned a somersault in the air, and then plunged to the ice. But the boys and girls on the bobsled did not notice that.
The sled smashed into the tree-branch—and stuck. Dan went over on his head, but arose unhurt. The others had managed to cling to the sled.
“I know who did this!” yelled Billy, when he got his breath. “It was that Spink fellow.”
“Oh! he wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mildred, timidly. “It—it must have fallen here.”
“Not much,” declared Billy.
When they dragged the bobsled back to the rest of the crowd, Spink had already gone home. As Dan said, smiling, there was no chance for a row then; and before Billy met Barry Spink again, he had got quieted down and, on Dan’s advice, did not accuse the fellow of the mean trick.
The kite was smashed all to pieces. Dan decided that that method of coasting was perilous, after all.
Besides, there was other work and other plans to take up the Speedwell boys’ attention; already Dan and Billy were giving their minds to the new iceboat, which they believed would prove a very swift craft indeed.
The regatta committee, headed by Mr. Darringford and made up of influential sportsmen of Riverdale and vicinity, had set the date for the iceboat races in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when business is slack. It was holiday week at the academy, too, and the Darringford Machine Shop hands had a few days off.
Seldom had any public sports “taken hold” on the people of Riverdale like this iceboat sailing.
“It’s the greatest stunt ever,” Biff Hardy declared, “and if the cold weather keeps up all the grandfathers and grandmothers in town—as well as the rest of us—will be out cavorting on the ice.”
There were some spills and a few minor accidents. But with the ice in the condition it was, there was little peril of accidents on the Colasha save through absolute carelessness.
Dan and Billy were busy these days racing in the Fly-up-the-Creek. Nobody but the family knew it; but most of the parts of the wonderful new boat Dan had invented, were finished. The engine had been set up and tried on the barn floor. Then the boys went over to Compton and got the parts Mr. Troutman had made for them, and with the parts Mr. Speedwell had helped them build, and certain others from the Darringford shops, the brothers secretly removed them all to John Bromley’s dock, and assembled them in an old fish-cleaning shed.
The boys were very secret about it. Ever since the first plans Dan had drawn disappeared so mysteriously at Island Number One, the brothers had been worried for fear somebody had found and would make use of them.
The principle upon which the motor-auxiliary worked was novel and Dan was confident that by the aid of the rapidly-driven wheel that would grip the ice under the boat amidships, and her spread of canvas, the new craft would beat anything in the line of an iceboat ever seen on the Colasha.
Mr. Darringford joked with the boys a good deal about the invention. He had examined the parts they had had built at the shops with much curiosity, and threatened to steal their ideas. But Dan and Billy knew they could trust him to the limit. It had been through Mr. Darringford that the Speedwell boys had obtained their real start in the racing game with their Flying Feathers—the motorcycles which were the particular output of the machine shops.
Nobody, Dan was sure, would guess the combination he had invented without seeing all the parts assembled. Only their father was in their confidence in the building of the boat.
Therefore, if any craft appeared like theirs at the regatta they could be sure that the lost plans had been made use of.
“And if anybody’s guilty,” declared Billy Speedwell, “it’s Barry Spink. He is crowing to the other fellows that he’s got us beaten already, and he won’t let anybody look into that shed behind his mother’s barn where the boat is being built.”
“If he’s doing it all himself, I’m not afraid,” chuckled Dan. “Not if he had our plans fifty times over.”
“But he isn’t. There is a foreigner working there—I’ve seen him. He is a mechanic Mrs. Spink hired in the city, Wiley Moyle says, and they’re paying him eight dollars a day.”
“Ow! that hurts!”
“I believe it’s true, just the same,” said Billy. “Spink has got his heart set on beating us.”
“If that’s the price he’s paying for it, he really ought to win,” returned the older lad. “Eight dollars a day—gee!”
The Speedwell family—down to little Adolph—were vastly interested in the new boat. Finally, when it came time to put it together, the question of naming the craft came to the fore.
Naming the Fly-up-the-Creek had been something of an inspiration; but now they all wanted a hand in the christening of Dan’s new invention. The matter was so hotly discussed that Mrs. Speedwell suggested finally drawing lots for the name.
One evening as they sat around the reading lamp each member of the family wrote his or her choice on a slip of paper (’Dolph printed his in big, up-and-down letters) and then the papers were shaken up in a bowl.
’Dolph was blindfolded and with great gravity drew a slip. It was Carrie’s choice, and the paper read “Follow Me”—and thus the motor-iceboat was christened.