“Ice-crack!” shouted Dick in explanation. “I saw it when we came up.”
“Better change your course then,” said Chub anxiously. But Dick only shook his head. That the Snowbird had decided to go around it and so give him a good chance of winning was no reason why he should follow suit. The Boreas held her course. Chub glanced in alarm at the calm, set face beside him and something he saw there quieted his fears. He looked forward. Ahead, rushing toward them, was a black fissure, an ice-crack which extended for over a hundred yards almost directly across the ice. How wide it was Chub had no idea. Nor did he have time for much speculation, for:
“Hold for all you’re worth, Chub!” cried Dick.
[“A half-mile away was the finish line”]
Then a twelve-foot expanse of water and broken ice swept up to them, Dick eased the helm until the boat was at right angles to the crack and the fore runners struck the slightly raised edge of the fissure at the same instant. Chub closed his eyes and held on convulsively. The Boreas rose bodily in the air, there was a momentary sensation of being swept through space, and then the runners clanged down upon the ice with a soft jar and the Boreas was tearing along toward the finish, having taken the gap with a twenty-foot leap as a hunter takes a fence!
Chub opened his eyes. The crack was just a dark thread behind them. Near at hand the Snowbird was charging along with them neck and neck. [A half-mile away was the finish line] and the groups of dark figures.
“Hold on!” cried Dick again. And this time there was exultation in his voice. The Boreas heeled to the blast and drew away from the red boat, foot by foot, yard by yard. Twenty seconds—and there was a gap between them! Thirty seconds—and there stretched the length of a boat between! Forty seconds—and the Boreas was charging past the waving figures at the finish, the brown-and-white flag at the masthead flapping in triumph. Dick had won by a scant ten yards!