CHAPTER XII
THE “FOLLOW ME”
The danger of a smash and overturn was imminent. The heavy bobsled wasplunging toward the obstruction, and there was neither time nor space tosteer clear of the branch.
The girls, breathless from the swift ride, could scarcely scream; andBilly was himself speechless. But Dan did not lose his head.
In a trice he whipped out his claspknife, sprung open the blade, andjust before the collision occurred he cut the kite-string.
The huge kite turned a somersault in the air, and then plunged to theice. But the boys and girls on the bobsled did not notice that.
The sled smashed into the tree-branch—and stuck. Dan went over on hishead, but arose unhurt. The others had managed to cling to the sled.
“I know who did this!” yelled Billy, when he got his breath. “It wasthat Spink fellow.”
“Oh! he wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mildred, timidly. “It—it musthave fallen here.”
“Not much,” declared Billy.
When they dragged the bobsled back to the rest of the crowd, Spink hadalready gone home. As Dan said, smiling, there was no chance for a rowthen; and before Billy met Barry Spink again, he had got quieted downand, on Dan’s advice, did not accuse the fellow of the mean trick.
The kite was smashed all to pieces. Dan decided that that method ofcoasting was perilous, after all.
Besides, there was other work and other plans to take up the Speedwellboys’ attention; already Dan and Billy were giving their minds to thenew iceboat, which they believed would prove a very swift craft indeed.
The regatta committee, headed by Mr. Darringford and made up ofinfluential sportsmen of Riverdale and vicinity, had set the date forthe iceboat races in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, whenbusiness is slack. It was holiday week at the academy, too, and theDarringford Machine Shop hands had a few days off.
Seldom had any public sports “taken hold” on the people of Riverdalelike this iceboat sailing.
“It’s the greatest stunt ever,” Biff Hardy declared, “and if the coldweather keeps up all the grandfathers and grandmothers in town—as wellas the rest of us—will be out cavorting on the ice.”
There were some spills and a few minor accidents. But with the ice inthe condition it was, there was little peril of accidents on the Colashasave 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 wonderfulnew boat Dan had invented, were finished. The engine had been set up andtried on the barn floor. Then the boys went over to Compton and got theparts Mr. Troutman had made for them, and with the parts Mr. Speedwellhad helped them build, and certain others from the Darringford shops,the brothers secretly removed them all to John Bromley’s dock, andassembled them in an old fish-cleaning shed.
The boys were very secret about it. Ever since the first plans Dan haddrawn disappeared so mysteriously at Island Number One, the brothers hadbeen worried for fear somebody had found and would make use of them.
The principle upon which the motor-auxiliary worked was novel and Danwas confident that by the aid of the rapidly-driven wheel that wouldgrip the ice under the boat amidships, and her spread of canvas, the newcraft would beat anything in the line of an iceboat ever seen on theColasha.
Mr. Darringford joked with the boys a good deal about the invention. Hehad examined the parts they had had built at the shops with muchcuriosity, and threatened to steal their ideas. But Dan and Billy knewthey could trust him to the limit. It had been through Mr. Darringfordthat the Speedwell boys had obtained their real start in the racing gamewith their _Flying Feathers_—the motorcycles which were the particularoutput of the machine shops.
Nobody, Dan was sure, would guess the combination he had inventedwithout seeing all the parts assembled. Only their father was in theirconfidence in the building of the boat.
Therefore, if any craft appeared like theirs at the regatta they couldbe sure that the lost plans had been made use of.
“And if anybody’s guilty,” declared Billy Speedwell, “it’s Barry Spink.He is crowing to the other fellows that he’s got us beaten already, andhe won’t let anybody look into that shed behind his mother’s barn wherethe boat is being built.”
“If he’s doing it all himself, I’m not afraid,” chuckled Dan. “Not if hehad our plans fifty times over.”
“But he isn’t. There is a foreigner working there—I’ve seen him. He is amechanic Mrs. Spink hired in the city, Wiley Moyle says, and they’repaying him eight dollars a day.”
“Ow! that hurts!”
“I believe it’s true, just the same,” said Billy. “Spink has got hisheart set on beating us.”
“If that’s the price he’s paying for it, he really ought to win,”returned the older lad. “Eight dollars a day—gee!”
The Speedwell family—down to little Adolph—were vastly interested in thenew boat. Finally, when it came time to put it together, the question ofnaming the craft came to the fore.
Naming the _Fly-up-the-Creek_ had been something of an inspiration; butnow they all wanted a hand in the christening of Dan’s new invention.The matter was so hotly discussed that Mrs. Speedwell suggested finallydrawing lots for the name.
One evening as they sat around the reading lamp each member of thefamily wrote his or her choice on a slip of paper (’Dolph printed his inbig, up-and-down letters) and then the papers were shaken up in a bowl.
’Dolph was blindfolded and with great gravity drew a slip. It wasCarrie’s choice, and the paper read “_Follow Me_”—and thus themotor-iceboat was christened.
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