HEN Saturday came the four walked over to the Cove through a blinding snow-storm to view the ice-boat. Dick piloted them down to the edge of the river, where, in a little shed in Johnson’s Shipyard, were two timbers bolted and braced together in the shape of a cross which Dick declared was the ice-boat. The mast was ready but not yet stepped and the narrow oval at one end which Dick called a cockpit was still unfinished. Harry was distinctly disappointed.
“I’d be afraid to sail on that, Dick,” she confided earnestly. “I might tumble off.”
Roy and Chub, however, were enthusiastic over the craft. The tapering backbone of shining whitewood and the runner-plank of the same material looked very business-like. Stays of steel wire led from the runner-plank forward and back to the ends of the backbone, with turn-buckles to tighten them. The rigging also, Dick explained, was to be of wire. The sails were promised for the middle of the next week, and on the following Saturday the boat was to be launched. On the way back to school there was little opportunity for conversation, since it was necessary to fight against the wind and sleet at every step. But afterward, before a roaring fire in the study room, they discussed the matter of a name. Harry had written down eleven names and Roy and Chub had one or two to suggest besides. Harry’s suggestions, much to her disappointment, didn’t find favor. Such names as Ice Queen, Reindeer and Fleetwing were, Dick thought, rather too ladylike, as he expressed it.
“I’d thought of Storm King,” said Roy tentatively.
“Not bad, but it doesn’t suggest speed,” Dick said. “How would Tempest do?”
“Tempest sounds like rain,” Chub objected, “with thunder and lightning on the side.”
“That’s so. What’s your name for it, Chub?”
“Oh, I’ve got just the thing,” answered Chub modestly. “What do you say to Polar Bear?”
“Might as well call it Teddy Bear,” scoffed Roy. “Polar bears aren’t fast.”
“Aren’t they, though? Did you ever have one chase you?”
“No, did you?”
“Lots,” answered Chub. “They can run like sixty!”
“Besides,” said Harry, “polar bears aren’t green, and the boat’s going to be green.”
“Polar bears are green before they’re boiled,” said Chub flippantly. “And anyway the boat isn’t painted yet. It could just as well be white as green.”
“Why don’t you name it Dick?” asked Roy. “You’re about the fastest thing on the ice I know of.”
“Glacier?” queried Chub.
“Icy, but slow,” said Dick.
“I know!” cried Harry. “North Wind!”
“That’s not bad, is it?” asked Dick. “Only I suppose it’s been used dozens of times. I’ll put that down, anyway. Try again, Harry.”
Harry settled her chin in the palm of one hand and frowned intensely at the leaping flames.
“Blast!” exclaimed Chub. “You speak of an icy blast, don’t you know?”
“Yes, but you’d think right away of dynamite,” laughed Dick.
“I suppose you would if you had no more poetry or romance in your soul than you have, you wild Westerner!”
“Isn’t there a bird that lives on ice?” asked Harry suddenly.
“Never heard of one,” Roy laughed. “He’d get cramps.”
“I mean that lives where there’s nothing but ice, Smarty,” said Harry indignantly.
“Then he’d have to eat it, wouldn’t he?”
“Quit your fooling,” said Chub. “Estrella De Vere is in earnest. You are quite right, Harry. The little bird you are thinking of is the ice-pick. It makes its nest in refrigerators and lives on lemon ice-cream and pineapple sherbet.”
“I think you’re all horrid,” said Harry. “There is a bird, Dick, isn’t there?”
“There’s the eider-duck,” answered Dick.
“Which plucks the feathers from its own breast and makes them into eiderdown quilts,” added Chub. “We will call the boat the Eiderdown Quilt.”
“Oh, cut it out, Chub,” said Roy. “Talk sense, can’t you?”
“You ask the impossible,” murmured Chub.
“Well, so far we’ve got only one worth considering,” said Dick. “That’s North Wind. What do you think of it?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Chub.
“All right, I think,” Roy replied.
“Can’t think of anything better, any of you?”
Roy and Chub shook their heads.
“Well, we don’t have to decide on it yet,” said Dick. “And maybe we’ll think of something else before Saturday. I’m going up-stairs; any one coming?”
“Wait!” cried Harry. “I know!”
“Estrella De Vere has got an idea,” chanted Chub.
“I know the very thing,” went on Harry with sparkling eyes.
“Out with it,” said Roy.
“Boreas!”
The three boys looked at each other inquiringly.
“Boreas,” muttered Dick.
“Boreas,” echoed Roy.
“Boreas,” pondered Chub.