He could place but one meaning on the words spoken by the two criminals regarding two schoolboys. They must refer to Nick Jasniff and Gus Plum.
"Can it be that those two are in with such rascals?" he asked himself. "I might think it of Jasniff, but I never dreamed Plum could be quite so bad. And yet last season he did some pretty crooked work with the valuable postage stamps that disappeared."
On and on swept the Snowbird, through the darkness of the night. It was growing colder each moment, and the cutting wind made each of the lads shiver. Dave wanted to tell Roger his tale in full, but now was no time for connected conversation.
Suddenly out of the darkness loomed a strange object, moving in almost the same direction as the Snowbird. It was the ice-boat belonging to the Rockville cadets.
"Look out!" yelled Henshaw, while Messmer gave a scream of fright. Then both ice-boats appeared to turn toward each other, there came a grinding, rending crash, and in a twinkling Dave found himself spinning on his back over the ice with Roger beside him.
Fortunately for Dave he landed in such a fashion that he received little more harm than a thorough shaking up. He slid a distance of two hundred feet and then came to a stop in a small ridge of snow.
"Hello, I wonder if anybody is hurt?" he asked himself, and got to his feet as quickly as possible. He walked back to the scene of the collision and soon ran into the senator's son.
"Are you all right, Dave?"
"Yes, Roger; how about you?"