“Believe me!” agreed his enthusiastic brother, “it’s some boat, girls. Wait till you see it.”
The Speedwell boys sailed their new invention down to the Boat Club Cove the morning of the regatta, using only her canvas. Barrington Spink and his foreign looking mechanic were running the new boat Spink had built all about the cove to show her paces, using, of course, only the motor. She did not go so very fast, but the owners of ordinary iceboats looked on the Streak o’ Light with envy.
“Say!” grunted Monroe Stevens; “we haven’t the ghost of a show with that thing. And Mr. Darringford’s got a power boat, too. What have you got under that canvas, Dan?”
“Never mind,” said the older Speedwell boy. “We’ll show our engine after the races—not before.”
But the brothers went over to Spink’s boat and examined it. Barry seemed very nervous and eyed the Speedwells askance while Dan was closely examining the mechanism that drove the Streak o’ Light.
“What do you think of it, Dan?” asked Mr. Darringford, who was standing near.
“I—don’t—know,” returned the boy, and backed away from the machine. Billy followed him, his face red and his hands clenched.
“It’s a ringer! It’s a ringer!” the younger boy declared, hotly. “He stole those plans——”
“He merely found them on the ice and picked them up,” put in Dan, quietly.
“And made use of them!” ejaculated Billy, almost choked for speech in his anger.