“If he was going to be hanged the next minute, Monroe would joke. Hi, there! Save your breath to cool your porridge, Monroe! Who’s with you?”
“B-b-barry Spink,” chattered young Stevens. “Don’t y-y-you know – know Barrington Spink, Dan? Lem-lem-lemme present you.”
This introduction seemed a little unnecessary, for the next moment Dan Speedwell seized Barrington Spink by the wrist and fairly “yanked” him out of the water. Young Spink was all but helpless from cold and exhaustion.
As Dan backed away from the hole, dragging Spink with him, Billy swarmed over them both and seized upon Monroe Stevens.
“Hold tight, old man,” he cried. “We’ll get you out.”
“All – all right,” chattered Stevens. “But d-d-don’t be too-o-o long about it, Billy. They certainly for – for – forgot to heat th – this bawth!”
Billy clutched him tightly by the collar and in a few moments he felt Dan tugging at his own heels. Barry Spink was lying, panting, on the ice – but fast freezing to it, for the thermometer was still far down the scale.
“Come on! come on!” gasped Billy, when the four of them were on their feet. “Let’s get where there’s a fire.”
“Y – y – you bet!” agreed Monroe Stevens. “I – I never was so shivery in – in all – all my life!”
Spink could hardly speak. But he moaned occasionally something about the lost iceboat, which he called the White Albatross.
“Goodness knows!” chattered Stevens, “we deserved to lose the silly thing. I knew better than to try her out to-day – and I – I told you so, Barry.”
“I didn’t know there was an iceboat on the river,” said Dan, as they all climbed the steep hill to the road and the waiting motor car.
“It – it was the only one on the Colasha,” mumbled Spink.
“We’ve been building it on the q. t., Dannie,” exclaimed Stevens, grinning. “And she certainly could travel some. We got one on you and Billy that time.”
“You seem to have got one on yourselves,” returned Dan, grimly.
“Didn’t you know enough to wait till the river really froze over, Money?” questioned Billy, with some disgust.
“Aw, that Barry!” grumbled young Stevens. “He was crazy to try her out. And we got up this morning before sun-up. Sure, she whizzed – ”
“We were watching you come down the river,” admitted Dan.
“Say! couldn’t she travel?” exclaimed Stevens.
“You bet,” agreed Billy. “How far up the Colasha did you go?”
“Went around Island Number One – ”
“And we’d been all right,” snarled Barry Spink, who seemed to take an interest in affairs for the first time, “if it hadn’t been for that dummy. He put the jinx on us.”
“The jinx!” exclaimed Billy, laughing.
But Dan had noticed something else, and he repeated, curiously: “‘Dummy?’ What d’ye mean – dummy?”
They had reached the motor-truck and Billy hustled the half-drowned youths into the seat and bundled them up in the robe and blankets while Dan started the motor.
“Back to the fire house – eh, Dan?” he asked his brother, as he slid under the wheel.
“The boiler room at the shops is nearer. They’ll take ’em in and dry them,” advised the older Speedwell.
“I – I don’t care where in the world you take us as – as long’s it’s hot,” wailed Barrington Spink.
“But how about this ‘dummy’?” demanded Dan, of Monroe Stevens.
“Why, we had stopped at Island Number One and were repairing the rudder, when along come this feller who couldn’t talk.”
“Couldn’t talk?” cried Billy, waking up to the coincidence, too, and looking at Dan, amazed. “Why! there must be two of them.”
“Two what?” queried Stevens.
“You called him a dummy. Is he really dumb?”
“He mumbled something or other when we asked him to help us,” explained Monroe; “but it wasn’t anything human. And Barry declared it was bad luck to meet a dummy.”
“And so it is!” snapped young Spink. “Doesn’t this prove it?”
“Funny about there being two fellows who act like dummies being at large,” remarked Dan to Billy.
“I should say so,” agreed the younger brother. “Say, Money! where’d your dummy go to when he wouldn’t help you chaps?”
“He was comin’ across from the mainland, and he went up into the woods on Island Number One. I bet he’s stopping there,” answered Stevens.
“Nonsense! there’s nothing on that island. No hut, nor any shelter. Bet he was going right along across the river.”
“Well, he didn’t go on while we were up that way, for when we got the White Albatross fixed, we sailed around the island and come down on the far side – and the snow lay all along the edge of the island there, and there wasn’t a footprint in it. Oh! here’s the shops. My goodness! won’t it be – be go-o-od to get next to – a fire,” chattered Stevens.
When the Speedwells had seen the shivering castaways humped upon stools before the boilers, they hurried away to deliver the remainder of their bottled milk. On the way to Colonel Sudds’s Dan said:
“What do you think of this ‘dummy’ they talk about, Billy?”
“Funny. Wonder if he’s the twin of the one we’ve got at our house?”
“Question is, have we got him at our house?” returned Dan, thoughtfully.
“Pshaw! the folks wouldn’t let him leave so soon. If he was at Island Number One so early, he must have left our house soon after we did,” declared Billy. “And that isn’t troubling me,” he added.
“What is?” asked his brother, smiling.
“Why – it’s no trouble. Not really. But there is something that is buzzing in my head, Dan.”
“I knew there was a bee in your bonnet,” chuckled his elder.
“Oh, you did? How smart you are! But I don’t believe you can guess what sort of a bee it is?”
“No-o. Some new idea, I reckon?”
“You bet it is, old man!” declared Billy, with enthusiasm. “And a big idea, too.”
“Let’s have it,” urged the older Speedwell.
“Well! you know about this Barry Spink; don’t you?”
“I know he’s not long in Riverdale.”
“Yes. But where he comes from?”
“Up the Hudson somewhere.”
“Crickey! that’s just it,” cried Billy, with rising excitement. “Up where he has lived the winters are long and hard. The rivers and lakes freeze over usually in November, and stay frozen until February or March. And I bet that fellow knows all about iceboating.”
“Don’t you tell him so,” advised Dan, with a grin. “He’s got a swelled head as it is – I can see that.”
“Never mind, Spink. That isn’t exactly what I mean – not what he knows. But he and his busted iceboat have put something into my head, old man.”
“Out with it, boy.”
“It’s