Page:Boys of Columbia High on the Ice.djvu/19

Rh meaning to show me a clean pair of heels to-day. It's going to be a race, Frank! There he comes out, and he's got Bill Klemm along with him, as usual!"

"He's heading up the river, Lanky. That's a challenge for you. Are you going to stand for it?" demanded Frank, who, like the vast majority of boys, never liked to let a plain dare pass by without accepting it.

"Watch me haul up on him hand over fist! Before we're past Rattail Island this little darling is going to make the Harrapin Flier look like thirty cents. She's a has-been, and belongs to a slow age!" said the skipper, jauntily.

He shifted his weight and asked Frank to do the same. In so doing the result was immediately shown in an accelerated pace on the part of the ice-boat; either that, or else a slant of fresh wind caught her sail, coming from out behind that same cove where the rival craft had been hidden.

Up the river they flew like a pair of frightened gulls; only such salt water birds were never seen around the neighborhood of Columbia.

Both skippers seemed to be jockeying for all the advantage there was to be had in position. The river was well known to Lanky, and he had been over this course so many times in every kind of water craft that he was familiar with each little