In a trice he whipped out his claspknife, sprung open the blade, and just before the collision occurred he cut the kite-string.
The huge kite turned a somersault in the air, and then plunged to the ice. 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 his head, 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 was that Spink fellow.”
“Oh! he wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mildred, timidly. “It—it must have fallen here.”
When they dragged the bobsled back to the rest of the crowd, Spink had already gone home. As Dan said, smiling, there was no chance for a row then; and before Billy met Barry Spink again, he had got quieted down and, 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 of coasting was perilous, after all.
Besides, there was other work and other plans to take up the Speedwell boys’ attention; already Dan and Billy were giving their minds to the new iceboat, which they believed would prove a very swift craft indeed.
The regatta committee, headed by Mr. Darringford and made up of influential sportsmen of Riverdale and vicinity, had set the date for the iceboat races in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, when business is slack. It was holiday week at the academy, too, and the Darringford Machine Shop hands had a few days off.
Seldom had any public sports “taken hold” on the people of Riverdale like this iceboat sailing.
“It’s the greatest stunt ever,” Biff Hardy declared, “and if the cold weather keeps up all the grandfathers and grandmothers in town—as well as the rest of us—will be out cavorting on the ice.”
There were some spills and a few minor accidents. But with the ice in the condition it was, there was little peril of accidents on the Colasha save 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 wonderful new boat Dan had invented, were finished. The engine had been set up and tried on the barn floor. Then the boys went over to Compton and got the parts Mr. Troutman had made for them, and with the parts Mr. Speedwell had helped them build, and certain others from the Darringford shops, the brothers secretly removed them all to John Bromley’s dock, and assembled them in an old fish-cleaning shed.