CHAPTER XX.

A SCHOONER IN TROUBLE

“Any of you fellows going down to the water front?” asked Paul Perkins, one bitter Saturday morning. The air was bound in iron fetters. Hard, black ice froze up the creek behind his house—the same creek which had supplied the water to quench the wagon house fire—and a chill wind was sweeping in from the sea.

“The water front?” echoed Tubby, who, with Rob and Merritt Crawford, had dropped into Paul’s on their way to the Red Mill pond, where they meant to enjoy some skating.

“You must need a bath awfully badly if you’re going to plunge in to-day,” added the stout youth.

“I’m going down to overhaul the iceaeromobile,” declared Paul, who had a big monkey wrench in his hand. “I’ve got it down in Redding’s boathouse now. It was the only place I could find to store it. Sam Redding let me put it there.”

“That was white of Sam,” declared Rob. “What a change there is in that fellow since he emerged from the influence of Bill Bender and his crowd.”

“I should say so,” agreed Merritt. “Say, fellows, let’s go down and see how the machine looks. Maybe Paul will give her a try-out, eh, Paul?”

“Don’t know,” rejoined the inventive youth. “If the ice is over the Inlet good and firm, we might try it. I’d like to, all right.”

“I heard it was thick enough to bear a wagon,” chimed in Merritt. “Wow! feel that wind blow. If there’s any ship off shore, she’ll have a hard time beating up into it.”

“That’s right,” agreed Rob; “but come on; let’s be getting down to Redding’s. I’d like to have another good look at Paul’s gasolene bobsled.”

The boys were soon at the boatyard. Under a canvas cover, as they entered, they could see the outlines of Sam’s hydroplane—the one which had caused them so much trouble when the Eagle Patrol was first organized. Other yachts stood about, shrouded mysteriously in their winter coverings. Their bare spars looked odd and melancholy, sticking up like leafless trees in the bitter wind.

As they had noticed, it was unusually cold, and the wind from off the sea came sweeping in with force enough to drive their breaths back when they faced it. The Inlet was covered for half its breadth with a sheet of dull, iron gray ice, hummocky as a plowed field in places. Beyond, they could see the cold, steel-blue sea, breaking in showers of spray on the narrow strip of sand and brush which separated the Inlet from the open ocean and formed a breakwater. It was a depressing scene, and the chilliness and cheerlessness of it was added to by the shrieking voice of the wind whipping round the sharp angles of the boatyard buildings.

“Look!” cried Merritt suddenly, pointing seaward. “Isn’t that a schooner off there?”

He pointed to the southeast, where a small sailing vessel of some kind could be seen beating up into the wind, evidently making desperate efforts to keep off the coast.

“She’s pretty close in,” commented Rob. “They’ll have their hands full to claw her off.”

“What is she?” inquired Paul. “I can’t make out her rig.”

“Looks like a two-masted schooner from here,” said Rob. “My! but she’s eating up into that wind like a good one.”

“She’ll need to,” commented Merritt, as they entered the boathouse in which the motor-scooter stood installed, like a mechanical horse. For two hours or more they worked with Paul over the strange craft, rigging an inclined support for the gasolene tank. At last it was completed, to the young inventor’s satisfaction. He declared that the fuel would feed more rapidly, now that the improvement had been made.

The job completed, they emerged from the boathouse, having persuaded Paul to join the skating party. But what they saw as they came into full view of the sea drove all thoughts of skating out of their minds. The schooner they had noticed earlier in the day was now about off the Hampton Inlet beach. But she was so close in that they could almost see the figures moving about on her decks.

“Gee-hos-o-phat!” shouted Tubby. “She’ll be in the surf in another fifteen minutes.”

The others agreed with him. Desperately as the crew of the small, two-masted schooner were working to keep her out of the turmoil of the wind-driven breakers, she was being slowly but surely driven into the vortex.

“She won’t live in them an hour,” exclaimed Rob. “Remember what happened to the Sea Horse when she went ashore off there two years ago?”

“A few of her ribs are there yet, and that’s about all,” agreed Merritt, “and she was a large vessel.”

“Wonder if the life savers at Lone Hill know about her,” exclaimed Paul. “Maybe we’d better telephone.”

“Good idea,” agreed Rob. “Is there one around here anywhere?”

“There’s one in the yacht club. I’ve got a key—we’ll use that,” said Tubby, heading a hasty dash for the clubhouse. They were soon in the gloomy, closed-up place, and Rob made for the telephone.

“Hullo, Central! Give me Quogue 212,” he said. “There’s a schooner driving ashore. * * * What? Good gracious, you don’t say so! That’s hard luck!”

“Say, fellows,” he exclaimed, turning with a downcast face from the instrument, “she says that the wires are out of order, and there’s no chance of getting the life savers.”

“Well, one of the beach patrols is bound to sight her before long,” said Merritt.

“But before long she’ll be ashore. Let’s see! Are the club field-glasses on that table? Let’s borrow them and take a look at her.”

The glasses were soon being brought to bear on the storm-stressed schooner. She was making a brave fight for it, driving eastward rapidly, and looking, from where they were observing her, to be almost in the midst of the tossing, crashing breakers.

“Sa-ay!” exclaimed Rob, drawing a long breath, as he handed the glasses to Merritt, “there’s a woman on that schooner.”

“Wh-at!”

The exclamation came from all the lads simultaneously.

“That’s right,” confirmed Merritt the next minute. “I can see her standing at the stern. Seems to be right by the wheel.”

Their faces grew grave, as in turn they gazed at the little vessel clawing valiantly for sea room, but being beaten back on every tack.

“From the way she acts I guess her rudder’s broken,” reasoned Rob. “It seems as if she won’t head into that wind, and from her rig she ought to do a whole lot better than she is doing.”

Suddenly Paul, who was holding the glasses, uttered a sharp cry. His face was pale as the others turned to him to find out the reason for his exclamation.

“Say, fellows, there’s a kid—a little fellow on board there, too.”

“The dickens!”

“That’s right. Gee Willikens, can’t we do anything but stand here like a lot of clams? We are a fine bunch of Boy Scouts,” burst out Rob.

“We might walk across the ice,” suggested Tubby.

“Two miles over that ice? We couldn’t do it in two hours,” vetoed Rob. “I wish we had an ice-scooter. There are some at Aquebogue, but that doesn’t do us any good.”

“That’s so,” the others were forced to admit.

“Anyhow,” put in the practical Merritt, “a scooter wouldn’t be any good. We could never beat up into that wind with her.”

“I’ve got it!” cried Rob suddenly, in a sharp, excited voice. “Say, Paul, now’s the time to try out your iceaero-what-you-may-call-um.”

“Jumping bob cats, Rob Blake, do you think we can do it with that?” gasped Tubby.

“I think so, if the ice will bear. It’s thick enough to carry a scooter, all right, and that thing-um-me-bob isn’t much heavier. Can you run her, Paul?” he added, with sudden anxiety.

“Can a duck swim?” came back the indignant reply. “All I’ve got to do is to turn on the gasolene and the switch, tickle the carburetor, and off we go.”

“Then we’ll try it. I’m not going to see a woman and a kid go to Davy Jones without stirring a finger to help them,” declared Rob. “Come on, fellows. Tubby you get a coil of rope; there’s some in that locker, plenty of it—come on, boys, we haven’t got any time to be talking, either.”

Off they darted, and by the time Tubby joined them with two or three coils of half-inch manila rope, the others had the iceaeromobile out by way of the big front doors that opened seaward, and led on to a runway sloping downward into what had been water, but now was ice. At the top of the runway they made a rope fast to the stern of the odd craft, and then, taking a turn round a big iron “crab,” paid out the rope gradually till Paul’s invention stood on, what he intended to be, her native element.

The rope was then cast off, and the Boy Scouts crowded aboard, Tubby and Merritt clinging on behind the seat, while Paul seated himself in the driver’s place. Rob, after being carefully instructed, ran to the stern to work the aeroplane propeller, which was expected to drive the queer craft forward. While he did this, Paul shoved forward a lever which dug a spiked brake down into the ice, holding the craft firm till the engine was working in good shape.

In the intense cold it was necessary to prime the engine—that is, inject gasolene into it from a cup on top of the cylinders for that purpose, before it would start. Finally, after a lot of swinging of the propeller, there came a sharp explosion.

“Chug!”

“Hooray!” shouted Merritt and Tubby, as a whiff of blue smoke was whipped shoreward by the wind.

“Pup-pup! Pur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! Pup!”

“She’s off!” yelled Paul.

“All aboard!” shouted Merritt, as Rob darted forward, being careful to avoid the rapidly whirring propeller, which would have beheaded him at one sweep if it had struck him. He swung himself into the seat beside Paul, digging in with his “toenails,” as he expressed it afterward. The next instant Paul released the lever which manipulated the brake.

Like an arrow from a bow, off shot the iceaeromobile, scooting across the ice at such a pace that it fairly took their breaths away.

“She works!” yelled Paul, throttling the engine down a bit as they dashed along.

“Of course, she does,” shouted Rob back in his ear above the roaring of the engine, “and she’s getting a great trial trip.”

To the eastward, where she was now being driven, they could see the schooner. Paul gave his steering wheel a slight twist, swinging over the front bob. Obediently the iceaeromobile swung around, too, answering her helm as a perfectly-trained horse obeys his bridle.

“Paul, you’re a blessed genius!” shouted one of the passengers, clinging on for dear life behind. But the wind whipped his words shoreward without their being heard by the lads on the seat.

Over the ice, for two miles or more up the Inlet, which branched out and ran eastward at this point, the motor ice-scooter drove. It was rough riding, but none of them minded that. The fact—the glorious fact that they were riding in such a craft as no man or boy had ever ridden in before—was a tonic in their veins. They could have sung aloud for joy if the cold had not cracked their lips and dried their faces.

“There’s the De Regny mansion,” shouted Rob, pointing shoreward at the gloomy old place among its dark trees. “Say, we’ve covered the distance in ten minutes. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”

“The ice doesn’t offer much resistance,” shouted back Paul modestly.

At last the head of the Inlet was reached, and Paul shut off his engine. A lever thrown into place acted on an ingenious arrangement of cogs and reversed the propeller. With the aid of his spiked brake, the young inventor brought his mile-a-minute craft to a dead stop within two hundred feet of the place where he first shut off the power. The iceaeromobile had been tried and not found wanting.

But other things than the success of Paul’s invention engaged their attention now. Not more than half a mile from them the schooner was laboring bravely still, when something happened that proved the beginning of the end. The boys saw her foresails torn bodily from their ropes by the wind, and sent scurrying like birds, inland, toward the De Regny house. The next instant, deprived of all means of keeping her head up to the seas, the schooner broached to. Almost before they could realize what had occurred, the doomed vessel was in the midst of the rolling breakers.

As they gazed, a cry of horror went up from the boys. It was fairly forced from their throats by the apparent hopelessness of the schooner’s position. Like a helpless log, she was driven shoreward, while over her and about her the green seas lifted and broke as if in triumph at their victory.