rdered Jack. A kick and the jumper was off.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, moved the big sled, borne hard to
the ground by such a burden. No one was alarmed. But as it slid
downward, the jumper gathered way, and faster and faster it went, and
the sound from beneath changed from a shrill grating to a menacing roar,
and the thing seemed like a big something launched downward from a huge
catapult at the narrow strip of road across the ice. With set teeth sat
Jack and Billy at their stakes, each steering carefully and well. There
was no swerve. The road was entered upon deftly with a rush, and out
upon it sped the monster. Then Jack said quietly, "Look out, Billy!"
Billy looked across at him and grinned, but uttered never a word nor
made a move as they tore along. But there was a sudden movement on
Jack's part, and his stake bore down hardly through the hole in the
runner. The flying jumper trembled and swayed, and then like a flash
left the roadway and darted down upon and away across the ice.

There was one shriek from the girls, and then all was quiet. "Whish!"
That was all as the jumper shot out over the glass-like surface. The ice
bent into a valley, but the Red Revenger was away before the break came.
It seemed as if the wild, fierce flight would never cease. But there is
an end to all things, and at last came a diminution of the jumper's
speed. Slower and slower moved the thing, then came a pause and sudden
quivering, and then a crash beneath and all about, and the jumper, with
its living load, dropped to the bottom! There was no tragedy complete.
The water came up just to the side rails and no further.

For fifteen or twenty feet on every side the ice bobbed up and down in
floating fragments, and beyond that, where it still remained intact, it
would support no one stepping out upon it from the water. It was
"India-rubber ice" no longer; it was cracked and brittle to the very
shore. That the jumper had careered out so far into the flats was
because of its velocity alone. There it stood, an island in a sea of ice
water; not a desert island, exactly, either. It was populated--very
densely populated. It was populated several deep, and now from its
inhabitants went up a dreadful howl.

There was no visible means of escape from the surface of the Red
Revenger. The boys who had been "corded" managed to change their
positions somehow, and stood where they had got upon their feet, holding
themselves together, and