Billy shouted some objections; but Dan gave him little attention until he had swung her clear across the river and they were headed down stream, and on the other side of the chain of islands.
“Don’t give it up! don’t give it up, Dan!” begged the younger lad.
“I’m not. But I’ve got a hunch, Billy,” returned Dan. “See where we are. What light is that?”
“Must be the light at Benzinger’s Inn,” sang out Billy, after a moment. “But it’s hard to tell. Landmarks seem different when the river’s frozen——”
“You’re right! you’re right!” cried Dan. “It’s the Inn. I see the big oak beside it.”
“That white staff——?”
“Yes. It’s the snow makes it look so ghostly. Now we’ll slip across nearer the islands.”
“What for?”
“Because we’re going to try to make Island Number One,” declared Dan, emphatically.
There seemed to fall a lull in the gale. The iceboat creaked over the gathering drift of snow that had sifted down here and lay in a thick sheet upon the ice in the lee of the islands.