BY W. G. VAN TASSEL SUTPHEN.
Jack Howard looked with some perplexity at the letter which he had just received from his chum Fred March. The latter had been spending a month of the long vacation at his uncle's, on the northern sea-coast, and that good-natured relative had been kind enough to suggest that the house was quite large enough to entertain Jack also. Hence the letter embodying the invitation, together with an earnest request that Jack should come by the earliest train on Monday morning. That was plain enough, besides being entirely satisfactory; but there was something else, a postscript, and this was the puzzle over which Jack was knitting his brows:
"I'm not to bring my bicycle, since the country roads are too sandy for good riding; but I must send on at once the three bicycle wheels stored in the loft of the machine-shop, together with half a dozen heavy coil springs, as per the enclosed specifications of the foreman of the shop. Well, what on earth—for it can't be a flying-machine—is Fred up to now?"
But the letter vouchsafed no further information upon the mystery, and Jack's duty was clearly to obey and ask no questions. Evidently Fred had some new idea, and that meant fun ahead—possibly an adventure. And so the commission was executed upon the spot, and Jack saw that the box was shipped early on Friday morning by the fast freight. It should be delivered to Fred at Agawam Beach by Monday, and Jack would be there himself that evening.
"It's a rattling good place for sailing and blue-fishing, and all that sort of thing," said Fred, on that Monday night, as the two boys left the house for a stroll down to the beach. "Uncle Win has let me knock about the bay in his little sloop—there she is at the pier, the white one, with the red at her water-line—and he says that I've picked it up as though I had been christened with salt-water. Sailing is nailing good fun. But look there!"
The ten-mile stretch of Agawam Beach lay before their eyes, just around the point that jutted out to form Half-Moon Bay. It was dead low tide, and the beach sloped so gradually that the receding water had left a wide floor of hard glistening sand, smooth and firm as a macadam road.
"I should think you could wheel along that easily enough," said Jack.
"So you can, and people often drive up to Cape Fear, ten miles off; they even have trotting matches when the county fair is on. I don't believe there's another beach like it in the world. But my idea will beat bicycling and sulky driving out of sight if it works, and I think it will. We'll go on now and take a look at the 'Jolly Sandboy'."
"The what?" began Jack; but Fred only laughed, and led the way to the boat-house.
It was a mysterious-looking creation that occupied the centre of the floor. The body of the machine was a skeleton frame-work of hard-wood strongly braced and bolted together, with a shallow-floored box at the acute angle. The centre timber bisected this acute angle and the base, and projected a few feet beyond. The bicycle wheels were attached to and supported the frame-work at the three corners, the one at the apex being pivoted so that it could be turned by a tiller in any direction. Just forward of the base-line, or what corresponds to the runner-plank in an ice-yacht, was a chock that was evidently intended for the reception of a mast, the end of the centre timber serving as a bowsprit, steadied by wire guys that ran to either extremity of the runner-plank. It was certainly original in design and appearance, and Jack Howard examined it with respectful curiosity.