CHAPTER XXIII

A DESPERATE CHANCE

The fire still burned with unabated fury along the shores, and so great was the heat that the lake was actually getting warmer. It was a large body of water, fed by ice-cold springs, and as a rule it was almost too cold for comfortable swimming. But now it had grown almost tepid, so much so that numerous fish, unused to any but a cold lake, were killed by the unaccustomed warmth and numbers of them began to make their appearance on the surface of the lake. The boys were ravenously hungry, but they had no way of cooking the fish, and they were far from being hungry enough to try to eat them raw. In their flight it had not occurred to any of them to take food along, and now they regretted the oversight, especially Jimmy, who looked longingly at the beautiful bass and lake trout so close to his hand.

“Say!” he exclaimed, “wouldn’t one or two of those fellows taste good, nicely broiled and served hot?”

“There’s plenty of fire on shore,” Joe pointed out. “Just swim over and poke one or two of those fish up on the bank, Doughnuts, and they’ll be ready to eat in no time.”

“Well, if you’ll furnish me with a nice asbestos suit, maybe I’ll try it,” retorted Jimmy, “Don’t forget that I might get cooked even sooner than the fish.”

“Oh, we’d have to take a chance on that,” said Joe, heartlessly.

“Maybe you’ll have to, but I won’t,” replied Jimmy, with conviction in his tones. “Go over and broil yourself, if you want to.”

“I will—if I want to,” Joe assured him.

“It’s a wonder you can’t cook the fish with your precious radio set,” said Buck, with one of his customary sneers.

“Don’t be too sure that we can’t!” exclaimed Bob, as Buck’s words gave him an idea. “Haven’t we got some German silver resistance wire on the raft, Joe?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure we have,” returned his friend. “What do you want it for?”

“Why not make an electric grid out of some of it?” asked Bob. “The wire is a fine gauge, and the electricity from the batteries will heat it red hot in a few seconds. We can mount it on a few insulators and cook as many fish as we like. How does that strike you, Jimmy?”

“Hooray! Just what the doctor ordered!” responded that individual. “You rig up the stove, Bob, and I’ll get hold of a couple of fish and clean them. See which will be ready first.”

“What do you think of the radio set now, Buck?” inquired Herb. “You thought we couldn’t cook with it, but in about ten minutes we’ll show you that we can. Maybe after a while we’ll make a fan out of you. Although it hardly seems possible. It takes brains to understand radio.”

“Aw, I could understand it if I wanted to,” growled Buck.

But there was little conviction in his tone. He and his cronies had consistently scoffed at radio, and told everybody who would listen to them that it was just a fad and not a serious science. And they had said it so often, that they had actually come to believe it.

Now, in a short space of time, Buck had seen how that same radio set that he had scoffed at had been utilized to fend off the bears, and he was about to see it utilized to cook their food. Concerning the latter he was still skeptical, however. He suspected that the Radio Boys were just trying to fool him, but this idea was somewhat shaken when he saw the business-like way in which Jimmy proceeded to scoop up two fat fish and clean them.

Meanwhile, Bob and Joe had been busy on the raft and had strung several coils of thin resistance wire across some flat porcelain insulators. Then they connected one end to one of the storage battery terminals, and connected the other end to a small knife switch, which was in turn connected to the other terminal of the battery. Now everything was ready to test their impromptu stove, and while the others looked on expectantly, Bob closed the switch.

The result was too good. They had not strung enough resistance wire to cut down the amperage sufficiently, and a second after Bob closed the switch the wires sprang to a white heat and a second later one strand melted, breaking the circuit before Bob even had time to open the switch.

“Good night!” exclaimed Herb, while Buck Looker viewed this practical demonstration of electricity’s heating power with astonishment writ large on his face. “You’d better stick about three times as much resistance into that circuit. Bob. Those batteries are sure full of juice.”

“I guess you’re right,” admitted Bob. “If we’d had a pencil and a table of resistances we could have calculated the right length of wire to an inch, but since we haven’t any such convenient things along, we’ll have to get the right length by experiment.”

“Well, I win on speed, anyway,” said Jimmy, complacently. “My fish are all ready to be cooked, and I don’t see that your stove is ready to cook them. You’ve got to step lively to beat out your Uncle Jimmy.”

“Guess he’s right, at that, Joe,” admitted Bob. “He’s hung it on us this time, anyway. But this stove’s ready for another test now, and I have a hunch we’ll have better luck this time.”

Once more he closed the switch, and this time the results were all that could be desired. After a few seconds the resistance wire glowed a dull red, then a brighter red, and stayed there, showing that about the proper amount of current was passing through the circuit. Bob placed three more insulators loosely on top of the wires to hold the fish a slight distance away from them, and then the stove was ready.

“Hand over your fish, Doughnuts, and we’ll put a golden brown on them that would make a French chef envious,” said Joe, and as Jimmy complied he placed them over the glowing wires.

“If this blamed smoke weren’t so thick we could smell them cooking pretty soon, and that would make them taste all the better,” lamented Jimmy.

“Never mind the smoke. How about the heat?” demanded Joe. “It feels to me as though I must be cooking almost as fast as those fish. I’m going to take a duck in the lake.”

“You won’t cool off much that way,” Jimmy warned him. “The lake is lukewarm.”

“No, and you won’t get any cleaner,” added Bob. “Just look at that black scum over the water!”

The boys had been working under a constant shower of burning sticks and leaves that dropped steadily into the lake. But by this time they had become so used to this continual bombardment that they scarcely noticed it. Hot bits of charcoal hissed against their clothing, and they brushed them off into the lake with almost as little concern as they would have shown in brushing away a troublesome mosquito. They were badly blistered in many places, especially their hands and faces, but they had become so used to the stinging pain that the Radio Boys did not bother to remark upon it now to each other. Buck was the only one of the little party who complained, and even he did not say very much, being ashamed to when he saw the others showing such fortitude. They kept their clothing wet by frequent dips in the lake, and waited with what patience they could for the fire to burn itself out. There seemed little immediate prospect of this, however, because the trees surrounding the lake were all of giant size, and as time passed on the heat seemed to wax hotter instead of getting less. They were filled with bitterness, however, when they thought of the bungalow and all the valuable timber belonging to Dr. Dale and the church, which they believed was almost certainly on fire by now.

They were roused from these gloomy thoughts by a sputtering and crackling over their impromptu electric stove, which warned them that the fish were rapidly becoming cooked. Jimmy took charge of them at this stage, being a good cook as well as a young man rarely endowed with appreciation of the good things of the table.

“I’m sorry I haven’t any seasoning for these beauties, but you’ll have to get along the best you can without it,” he said. “This fish is done now, and I’ll whack it up the best I can. If there isn’t enough, we can easily fish one or two more out of the lake.”

In spite of Jimmy’s apology the fish tasted good, although before they were all eaten the boys were in the water again, seeking relief from the suffocating heat. After that there was not much they could do but keep their raft well away from the blazing shore and pray for rain, which they all did fervently.