“Looks a little like the blizzard day,” remarked Roy, “and it’s certainly getting some colder. I hope the wind won’t come up. If it does, I hope it comes out of the north.”
While he spoke, the two boys took hold of the frame of the monoplane to pull it out onto the smooth snow and head it south. The airship had been resting upon what seemed to be a little ridge. Pulling the chassis from this rise in the snow, they were both astounded to find the body of the car shift to one side and sink into the snow.
Both sprang to that side of the car and Norman, running his hand along the wooden landing ski, gasped with astonishment when he found the long runner broken sharply in the middle.
“That’s fine!” he shouted. “This runner’s out of business!”
Roy ran to the rear where the car had stopped and found underneath the snow a rocky ledge.
“She hit this!” he exclaimed. “Can’t we tie her up?”
Norman was plainly in doubt but they cleared away the surrounding snow and found that, instead of a single break, a section of the runner had been shattered. Two jagged ends of wood extended into the soft snow.
“If you’ll find any way to fix them,” exclaimed Norman, “maybe we can get a start. But it looks to me as if we’d have to make a new runner.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Roy, beating his numbing hands together. “We can fix ’er.”
The two boys made this attempt and, as often as they thought they had patched up the shattered ski and mounted into the car in attempts to make a start, the patched strip of wood would part and the chassis would lunge again into the snow.