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Just then a faint cry for help came from the half-submerged iceboat. Billy returned a shout of encouragement as he and Dan hurried to get around the open stretch of water.
When the boys leaped down upon the ice they chose a firm spot for their attempt. They were able to run right out toward the middle of the river (which was here at least two miles wide) without venturing upon any thin ice. Their principal peril was from holes hidden by the heaped-up snow of the night before.
The weight of this snow had broken down great patches of ice, leaving open places like this into which the iceboatmen had fallen. And there had been a very high tide not four hours before, which had raised the level of the Colasha River even as far up-stream as this point.
Naturally the ice – not yet very thick – had given way in many places. The two on the wrecked boat had been very reckless indeed.
This was no time to tell them so, however. Dan and Billy went to work in the most approved fashion to reach the half-frozen castaways clinging to the outrigger of the ice craft.
“Keep up your pluck! We’re coming!” yelled Billy.
“So – so’s – Christmas!” stammered one of the castaways.
“Crickey!” gasped Billy. “That’s Monroe Stevens – sure’s you live, Dan!”
The Speedwells had cast the fence rails on the ice in a criss-cross fashion and now Dan was creeping out upon the frail platform thus made, to the very thin ice. He said:
“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 just this: Let’s go in for an iceboat ourselves. Let’s get the fellows of the Outing Club interested – and maybe some of the girls, too – Mildred, and Lettie, and some of the others. And we’ll have races, and all that.”
“If the ice gets thick enough and ‘stays put,’” suggested Dan, slowly.
“You said yourself last night,” Billy declared, quickly, “that the almanac man promised a real winter this time.”
“And we’re getting a piece of it right now. Jinks! maybe you’ve got a big idea, Billy.”
“Sure I have. And if that chump, Barry Spink, can build a boat as good as that White Albatross, what’s the matter with us building a better?”
“Now you’re talking,” agreed his brother, with growing enthusiasm. “Hustle now, Billy! there goes the first bell. We’ve only just time to get the truck under the shed and hustle into school. Got my books with yours? Come on, then,” and the Speedwells hurried off to the academy.
CHAPTER III
MORE THAN ONE MYSTERY
The two reckless youths who had tried out the iceboat and lost her that morning did not appear at the academy during the forenoon session. Indeed, Barrington Spink was not an attendant at the Riverdale school.
He was a recent comer to the town and the boys knew very little about him, save in a general way. He was the son of a widowed lady who seemed to have a superabundance of cash and who was very proud and haughty.
Mrs. Spink had bought a large house on the outskirts of Riverdale, had furnished it gaudily, hired a host of servants, repainted and refurbished everything about the place, including the iron dog on the lawn, and had set up a carriage and pair as well as an automobile.
The Speedwells had often seen Barrington Spink around town before the occasion when Billy had hauled him out of the icy river, but had never spoken to him. Monroe Stevens belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Riverdale and naturally Spink had gravitated toward “Money,” as the other boys called Monroe.
After school was out and Dan and Billy were walking across the square towards Appleyard’s to get the truck (they had not gone home at noon) they came face to face with the newcomer to Riverdale.
He was with Wiley Moyle and Fisher Greene, both of the so-called “aristocracy” of Riverdale, but good fellows both of them and Billy’s particular friends.
“Say, Billy,” remarked Fisher, grinning, “Barry here has just been telling us how you pulled him out of the river this morning. The chill hasn’t got out of him yet, you see,” he added, with a meaning glance at young Spink, who had nodded very distantly in return for the Speedwells’ hearty greeting.
“He was just asking us about you,” drawled Wiley Moyle, “and we told him that Riverdale would have to go without lacteal fluid in its coffee if it wasn’t for you and Dan.”
“And our cows,” replied Billy, seriously. “They have something to do with the milk supply, I assure you.”
“And the barn pump – I know,” chuckled Wiley, grinning saucily.
“Oh – I – say,” stammered Spink, eyeing Billy rather askance. Dan and some of the older boys were discussing an important topic some distance away. “I didn’t suppose you fellows really made a chum of this – er – Speedwell boy.”
“Huh?” grunted Wiley. Wiley’s folks were rich enough, but his father made him earn most of his own spending money, and Wiley helped around Jim Blizzard’s newspaper office on Saturdays and after school. “I knew you were a chump, Barry; but this – ”
“Oh, I’m obliged enough to him, I’m sure,” said Spink, airily. “He certainly helped me out of the river.”
He had been fumbling in his pocket while he spoke and now brought out a little flat packet of folded bills. Selecting one, he approached Billy Speedwell, who, having first flushed at the fellow’s impudent tone, was now grinning as broadly as Wiley and Fisher.
“Re’lly,” said young Spink, “you did that very bravely, Speedwell. Here is a little – er – something to show my appreciation.”
Billy had accepted the dollar bill and at once fished up a handful of silver from the depths of his trousers’ pocket.
“Hold on! hold on, Mr. Spink!” he exclaimed. “If you mean to pay me with this for saving your life, there is no need of overpaying me. Here! there’s ninety-five cents change – count it. And I’m not sure that I’m not charging you too much as it is.”
Fisher and Wiley Moyle burst into a roar of laughter, and Barrington Spink turned several different colors, as he realized that Billy had made him look like a goose.
“Why – why – That fellow’s only a milkman,” sputtered Spink, as Billy drifted over to the bigger crowd of boys to hear what was afoot.
“You give me a pain in my solar plexus – you gump!” snapped Fisher Greene. “Why, Billy and Dan have got twenty thousand dollars or more in their own right. Didn’t you ever hear of the treasure of Rocky Cove? Well, those are the boys who got the emeralds – they, and the old Admiral and Mr. Asa Craig. You want to take a tumble to yourself, Barry Spink!” and he moved away from the new boy.
Barrington Spink’s eyes fairly bulged. “He – he’s kiddin’ me; isn’t he?” he demanded of the grinning Wiley.
“Not so’s you’d notice it,” returned Moyle.
“Not twenty thousand dollars?”
