Billy shouted something to him, but he could not hear what it was. The younger boy pointed ahead, and Dan stooped to peer under the boom.
The moon had drawn a thin veil of cloud over her face and, for the moment, her light was almost withdrawn. A mist seemed rising from the ice itself; but Dan knew that was a mere illusion.
Suddenly the moon cast aside her veil and her full light scintillated across the river. Billy uttered a yell and waved a warning arm as he gazed ahead. Dan saw it, too.
It seemed as though a wide channel had suddenly opened right ahead of the rushing iceboat—they could see the moonlight glinting across the tiny waves of an open stretch of water.
CHAPTER VI
GETTING INTO TRIM
Ready as the Speedwell boys were in most emergencies, here was an occasion in which it seemed that disaster could not be averted. That is the principal peril of iceboating; it is impossible to stop a craft, once she is under fast way, within a reasonable distance.
It was too late to drop the sail and hope to bring the Fly-up-the-Creek to a halt before her nose was in the open water. For the instant Dan Speedwell’s heart seemed to stand still.
There flashed across his mind the remembrance of how that other iceboat—the White Albatross—had gone into the open river. Had he and Billy not been on the spot, as they were, Money Stevens and Barrington Spink would doubtless have been drowned.