Tom, Dick and Harriet

by Ralph Henry Barbour

A bitterly cold, lowering day with a northeasterly gale blowing almost straight down the river, nipping fingers and ears and noses. Now and then a fitful flurry of snow, driving past like a miniature blizzard.

In front of the Ferry Hill landing two ice-boats, heads to the wind, sails snapping and wire rigging singing in the blasts; one with red hull and a cherry-and-black flag whipping from the masthead, the other glistening in new green and bearing the brown-and-white banner of Ferry Hill on high. About them some sixty boys from the rival schools, turning and twisting in and out on their skates in an effort to keep warm in the face of the biting gale. And over all a leaden, cheerless sky.

The race was to be windward and return, a distance of about fourteen miles. The starting-line was opposite the northern end of the boat-house, the turning-point some seven miles up the river at a place called Indian Head, where a small islet rose from the river near the west bank to serve as a mark. The boats were to finish opposite the boat-house. On the Snowbird were Joe Thurston and his friend Bob Cutler, while the Boreas held Dick and Chub. Whitcomb, with a small starting pistol in his gloved hand, was trying to push the crowd back so that the boats might swing into the wind at the signal.

The warning was given, the rival skippers declared themselves ready and the pistol barked, its sharp report being instantly whisked away on the wind. The slender noses of the two boats were turned, the sails filled slowly, and after a moment of seeming hesitation the Snowbird and the Boreas started slowly across the ice on the first tack to starboard, while behind them the rival groups shouted encouragement to the yachtsmen and defiance to each other. With every instant the boats gathered headway, gliding across the glassy surface like gaily hued dragon-flies above the surface of a pool. The white wings became taut under the steady wind and the windward runners left the ice as the boats heeled further and further. It was nip and tuck on that first tack, the boats keeping their relative positions until the farther shore was reached and the helms were put over. Around swung the crafts and pointed their noses toward the right bank of the river.

On the Boreas Dick and Chub lay on opposite sides of the backbone which divided the steering-box into halves. Dick held the tiller. They were wrapped in the warmest clothing they had been able to find, but it was far from warm enough. The wind came slanting against them and bored its way down necks and up sleeves. Fingers were already tingling and foreheads aching.

“Cold!” shouted Dick above the singing of the runners and the whistle of the wind. Chub nodded and made a grimace without taking his gaze from the Snowbird, which, some fifty feet away, was bowling along finely.

“She’s gaining,” said Chub presently. Dick turned and looked, glanced at his sails and eased the helm a little. Then it was time to go about again, since the shore was becoming dangerously near. The Snowbird was already turning, slowing for a moment as she pointed dead to windward and then springing away again as the gale slanted across the sails. The Boreas had lost and on this tack she was sixty or seventy yards behind her rival. The latter’s larger sail area was telling. Chub looked anxiously at Dick, but that youth was gazing across at the Snowbird, a hand held in front of his face to break the wind. When he turned there was a little frown on his face and he pointed the nose of the Boreas closer into the wind. For a while she seemed to be holding her own. Then the Snowbird went about again, this time on a mile-long reach made possible by a bend in the river. The Boreas was almost half a minute behind now and Dick was growling things to himself that Chub couldn’t catch. The wind seemed to be growing stronger, though perhaps it was merely that it had a broader sweep here where the stream turned toward the east.

“How fast?” asked Chub, his hand to his mouth.

“Twenty-five, I guess,” Dick shouted back.

Chub tried to whistle, but couldn’t. Beside them the ice was only a blurred surface that rushed by without form or substance, a grayish-green nothing, as it seemed, above which they were speeding with a rapidity that almost took the breath away. The wind shrieked and roared and strove to blow them from the box to which they were clinging. A sudden flurry of snow rushed down upon them, hiding the shore and the other boat from their sight, and blinding them so that for a moment they had to close their eyes.