“She works!” yelled Paul, throttling the engine down a bit as they dashed along.
“Of course, she does,” shouted Rob back in his ear above the roaring of the engine, “and she’s getting a great trial trip.”
To the eastward, where she was now being driven, they could see the schooner. Paul gave his steering wheel a slight twist, swinging over the front bob. Obediently the iceaeromobile swung around, too, answering her helm as a perfectly-trained horse obeys his bridle.
“Paul, you’re a blessed genius!” shouted one of the passengers, clinging on for dear life behind. But the wind whipped his words shoreward without their being heard by the lads on the seat.
Over the ice, for two miles or more up the Inlet, which branched out and ran eastward at this point, the motor ice-scooter drove. It was rough riding, but none of them minded that. The fact—the glorious fact that they were riding in such a craft as no man or boy had ever ridden in before—was a tonic in their veins. They could have sung aloud for joy if the cold had not cracked their lips and dried their faces.
“There’s the De Regny mansion,” shouted Rob, pointing shoreward at the gloomy old place among its dark trees. “Say, we’ve covered the distance in ten minutes. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”
“The ice doesn’t offer much resistance,” shouted back Paul modestly.
At last the head of the Inlet was reached, and Paul shut off his engine. A lever thrown into place acted on an ingenious arrangement of cogs and reversed the propeller. With the aid of his spiked brake, the young inventor brought his mile-a-minute craft to a dead stop within two hundred feet of the place where he first shut off the power. The iceaeromobile had been tried and not found wanting.
But other things than the success of Paul’s invention engaged their attention now. Not more than half a mile from them the schooner was laboring bravely still, when something happened that proved the beginning of the end. The boys saw her foresails torn bodily from their ropes by the wind, and sent scurrying like birds, inland, toward the De Regny house. The next instant, deprived of all means of keeping her head up to the seas, the schooner broached to. Almost before they could realize what had occurred, the doomed vessel was in the midst of the rolling breakers.
As they gazed, a cry of horror went up from the boys. It was fairly forced from their throats by the apparent hopelessness of the schooner’s position. Like a helpless log, she was driven shoreward, while over her and about her the green seas lifted and broke as if in triumph at their victory.