Besides, there was other work and other plans to take up the Speedwell boys’ attention; already Dan and Billy were giving their minds to the new iceboat, which they believed would prove a very swift craft indeed.
The regatta committee, headed by Mr. Darringford and made up of influential sportsmen of Riverdale and vicinity, had set the date for the iceboat races in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when business is slack. It was holiday week at the academy, too, and the Darringford Machine Shop hands had a few days off.
Seldom had any public sports “taken hold” on the people of Riverdale like this iceboat sailing.
“It’s the greatest stunt ever,” Biff Hardy declared, “and if the cold weather keeps up all the grandfathers and grandmothers in town—as well as the rest of us—will be out cavorting on the ice.”
There were some spills and a few minor accidents. But with the ice in the condition it was, there was little peril of accidents on the Colasha save through absolute carelessness.
Dan and Billy were busy these days racing in the Fly-up-the-Creek. Nobody but the family knew it; but most of the parts of the wonderful new boat Dan had invented, were finished. The engine had been set up and tried on the barn floor. Then the boys went over to Compton and got the parts Mr. Troutman had made for them, and with the parts Mr. Speedwell had helped them build, and certain others from the Darringford shops, the brothers secretly removed them all to John Bromley’s dock, and assembled them in an old fish-cleaning shed.
The boys were very secret about it. Ever since the first plans Dan had drawn disappeared so mysteriously at Island Number One, the brothers had been worried for fear somebody had found and would make use of them.
The principle upon which the motor-auxiliary worked was novel and Dan was confident that by the aid of the rapidly-driven wheel that would grip the ice under the boat amidships, and her spread of canvas, the new craft would beat anything in the line of an iceboat ever seen on the Colasha.
Mr. Darringford joked with the boys a good deal about the invention. He had examined the parts they had had built at the shops with much curiosity, and threatened to steal their ideas. But Dan and Billy knew they could trust him to the limit. It had been through Mr. Darringford that the Speedwell boys had obtained their real start in the racing game with their Flying Feathers—the motorcycles which were the particular output of the machine shops.
Nobody, Dan was sure, would guess the combination he had invented without seeing all the parts assembled. Only their father was in their confidence in the building of the boat.