“We might walk across the ice,” suggested Tubby.
“Two miles over that ice? We couldn’t do it in two hours,” vetoed Rob. “I wish we had an ice-scooter. There are some at Aquebogue, but that doesn’t do us any good.”
“That’s so,” the others were forced to admit.
“Anyhow,” put in the practical Merritt, “a scooter wouldn’t be any good. We could never beat up into that wind with her.”
“I’ve got it!” cried Rob suddenly, in a sharp, excited voice. “Say, Paul, now’s the time to try out your iceaero-what-you-may-call-um.”
“Jumping bob cats, Rob Blake, do you think we can do it with that?” gasped Tubby.
“I think so, if the ice will bear. It’s thick enough to carry a scooter, all right, and that thing-um-me-bob isn’t much heavier. Can you run her, Paul?” he added, with sudden anxiety.
“Can a duck swim?” came back the indignant reply. “All I’ve got to do is to turn on the gasolene and the switch, tickle the carburetor, and off we go.”
“Then we’ll try it. I’m not going to see a woman and a kid go to Davy Jones without stirring a finger to help them,” declared Rob. “Come on, fellows. Tubby you get a coil of rope; there’s some in that locker, plenty of it—come on, boys, we haven’t got any time to be talking, either.”
Off they darted, and by the time Tubby joined them with two or three coils of half-inch manila rope, the others had the iceaeromobile out by way of the big front doors that opened seaward, and led on to a runway sloping downward into what had been water, but now was ice. At the top of the runway they made a rope fast to the stern of the odd craft, and then, taking a turn round a big iron “crab,” paid out the rope gradually till Paul’s invention stood on, what he intended to be, her native element.