"Let her go," ordered Jack. A kick and the jumper was off.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, moved the big sled, borne hard to the ground by such a burden. No one was alarmed. But as it slid downward, the jumper gathered way, and faster and faster it went, and the sound from beneath changed from a shrill grating to a menacing roar, and the thing seemed like a big something launched downward from a huge catapult at the narrow strip of road across the ice. With set teeth sat Jack and Billy at their stakes, each steering carefully and well. There was no swerve. The road was entered upon deftly with a rush, and out upon it sped the monster. Then Jack said quietly, "Look out, Billy!" Billy looked across at him and grinned, but uttered never a word nor made a move as they tore along. But there was a sudden movement on Jack's part, and his stake bore down hardly through the hole in the runner. The flying jumper trembled and swayed, and then like a flash left the roadway and darted down upon and away across the ice.
There was one shriek from the girls, and then all was quiet. "Whish!" That was all as the jumper shot out over the glass-like surface. The ice bent into a valley, but the Red Revenger was away before the break came. It seemed as if the wild, fierce flight would never cease. But there is an end to all things, and at last came a diminution of the jumper's speed. Slower and slower moved the thing, then came a pause and sudden quivering, and then a crash beneath and all about, and the jumper, with its living load, dropped to the bottom! There was no tragedy complete. The water came up just to the side rails and no further.
For fifteen or twenty feet on every side the ice bobbed up and down in floating fragments, and beyond that, where it still remained intact, it would support no one stepping out upon it from the water. It was "India-rubber ice" no longer; it was cracked and brittle to the very shore. That the jumper had careered out so far into the flats was because of its velocity alone. There it stood, an island in a sea of ice water; not a desert island, exactly, either. It was populated—very densely populated. It was populated several deep, and now from its inhabitants went up a dreadful howl.
There was no visible means of escape from the surface of the Red Revenger. The boys who had been "corded" managed to change their positions somehow, and stood where they had got upon their feet, holding themselves together, and the girls and younger children sat stupefied in the positions they had held when coming down the hill, from the throats of the latter going up the lively wail referred to. Billy looked across at Jack and grinned again, this time with great solemnity, and Jack himself looked just a trifle grave.
"Bang! rat-tat-tat! whack!" sounded from the schoolhouse, and the faces of the younger children paled. The noon hour had reached its end, and the schoolmaster was sounding his usual call. No bells summoned the pupils at this rural place of learning, but instead, at recess and at noon time the pedagogue came to the door and hammered loudly with his ruler upon the clapboards there beside him. Very grim was this same schoolmaster, and unfortunate was the pupil who came into the room a laggard after that harsh summons had rung out across the fields and flats. There stood the schoolmaster—he could be seen from the Red Revenger—and it was not difficult even at that distance to imagine the ominous look upon his face. Again and again came forth the wooden call, and then the schoolmaster stepped out into the roadway. He looked about inquiringly. He came to the top of the hill, from whence, off in the flats, the jumper and its load were plainly seen, and then he paused. It was clear that he was puzzled and was meditating. He called out hoarsely:
"What do you mean? What are you doing? Come in, and come now!"
There was no mistaking the quality of that sharp summons. It meant business, and in all probability it meant trouble, too, for somebody; trouble of strictly personal, as well as of a physical character. There was no reply for a moment, and then Billy, the reprobate, grinning again at Jack, and giving to his voice a tone intended to be a compound of profound respect and something like unlimited despair, bawled out:
"We can't!"
The teacher descended the hill with all firmness and sedateness; he looked like a ramrod, or a poker, or anything stiff and straight, and suggestive of unpleasantness. He followed the roadway until just opposite the jumper, and then surveying the scene with an angry eye, commanded all to return to the schoolhouse on the moment. Here the situation became acute. It was Jack's turn now to make things clear. That villain rose to the occasion gallantly. He shouted out an explanation of how the jumper had happened, by the merest accident in the world, to leave the roadway, and had gone out so far upon the India-rubber ice; how the final catastrophe had taken place, and how helpless they all were in their present condition. The road could be reached only by a wade of a hundred yards through two feet deep of ice water—more in places—breaking the ice as an advance was made. It would be an awful undertaking, the death almost of the little children, and dangerous to all. What should they do? And the rascal's voice grew full of trouble and apprehension. Fortunately for him, the teacher was too far off to note the expression on his face.