So what the _Fly-up-the-Creek_ could do was known only to Dan and Billy. They sailed her one night away up the river, past Meadville, the mills, and the penitentiary, and so on to the entrance to Karnac Lake. It was certainly a great sail.
“Would you believe she’d slide along so rapidly with nothing but a puff of wind now and then?” gasped Billy, as they tacked and came about for the return run.
“That’s all right,” Dan returned. “But suppose we got off so far and the wind gave out on us altogether? Wouldn’t that be an awful mess?”
“Gee!” exclaimed Billy, laughing. “We ought to have an auxiliary engine on her—eh? How about it, boy?”
“Why, Billy!” exclaimed Dan, “that might not be such a bad idea.”
“Wouldn’t work; would it?” asked the younger boy, curiously. “I only said that for a joke.”
“You’re not serious, Dan?” gasped Billy, seeing his brother’s thoughtful face.
“Whoo!” burst out Billy. “You’re off on a cloud again, Dan, old boy! Whoever heard of a motor iceboat? Zing!”
“I—should—say! Wouldn’t it be ‘some pumpkins’ to own an engine-driven craft that would make Money, and Spink, and Burton Poole, and all the others that are going in for iceboating, look like thirty cents?”
“I admire your slang, boy,” said Dan, in a tone that meant he _didn’t_ admire it.
“Well, but, Dan! you know that idea is preposterous.”
“You’re wrong. There are sleds, or boats, being used on the Antarctic ice right now, propelled by gasoline—an air propeller and a series of ‘claws’ that grip the ice underneath the body of the sledge.”
“Air propeller?” cried Billy. “Why, there isn’t resistance enough in the air to give her any speed.”
“Not like a propeller in the water, of course. Yet, how do aeroplanes fly?”
“But, suppose we had a small engine on here and a sprocket wheel attachment—something right under the main beam to grip the ice and force her ahead?”
“Great, Dannie!” exclaimed the younger boy, instantly converted.
“Well—it might not work, after all,” said Dan, slowly.
“We’ll see. Where we lose headway on this _Fly-up-the-Creek_ is when we head her around, or the wind dies on us altogether. _Then_ the auxiliary engine might help—eh?”
“Great!” announced Billy again. “We wouldn’t get becalmed out here on the river then, that’s sure.”