But the three just starting down the slide could not distinguish his
words.

Jennie shut her eyes tight the moment the toboggan lurched forward,
so she could not possibly see anything that lay before them. Ruth
peered over the stout girl's shoulder, the wind half blinding her
eyes with tears. But the moonlight lay so brilliantly upon the track
that it was revealed like midday. Something lay prone and black upon
the icy surface of the slide.




CHAPTER XII

PERIL--AND A TAFFY PULL


It seemed to Ruth Fielding, as the toboggan dashed down the chute
toward that strange object in their course, as though her lips were
glued together. She could not speak--she could not utter a sound.

And yet this inaction--this dumbness--lasted but a very few seconds.
The thing upon the slide lay more than half way down the hill--a
quarter of a mile ahead when her stinging eyes first saw it.

Toward it the sled rushed, gathering speed every moment, and the
object on the track grew in her eyes apace. When her lips parted she
screamed so that Isadore heard her words distinctly: