Till now the air had been still, but presently the wind blew from the south almost a gale, this was straight down the water, so keeping their skates together and spreading out their coats for sails they drove before the wind at a tremendous pace, flying past the trees and accumulating such velocity that their ankles ached from the vibration of the skates. Nor could they stop by any other means than describing a wide circle, and so gradually facing the wind. Bevis began to make an ice-raft to slide on runners and go before the wind with a sail like the ice-yachts on the American lakes.
But by the time the frame was put together, and the blacksmith had finished the runners, a thaw set in. It is just the same with sleighs, directly the sleigh is got to work, the snow goes and leaves the heaviest and muddiest road of the year. The ice-yachts of America must give splendid sport; it is said that they sometimes glide at the rate of a mile a minute, actually outstripping the speed of the wind which drives them. This has been rather a puzzle why it should be so.
May it not be the same as it was with Bevis and Mark when they spread their coats like sails and flew before the gale with such speed that it needed some nerve to stand upright—till the vibration of the skates caused a peculiar numblike feeling in the ankles? They either did or seemed to go faster than the wind, and was not this the accumulation of velocity? As a bullet dropped from a window falls so many feet the first second, and a great many more the next second, increasing its pace, so as they were thrust forwards by the wind their bodies accumulated the impetus and shot beyond it. Possibly it is the same with the swift ice-yacht. The thaw was a great disappointment.
The immense waves of ocean rise before the wind, and so the wind rushing over the ice no longer firm and rigid quickly broke up the surface, and there was a tremendous grinding and splintering, and chafing of the fragments. For the first few days these were carried down the New Sea, but presently the wind changed. The black north swooped on the earth and swept across the waters. Fields, trees, woods, hills, the very houses looked dark and hard, the water grey, the sky cold and dusky. The broken ice drifted before it and was all swept up to the other end of the New Sea and jammed between and about the islands. They could now get at the Pinta, and resolved to have a sail. “An arctic expedition!”
“Antarctic—it is south!”
“All right.”
“Let us go to New Formosa.”
“So we will. But the ice is jammed there.”
“Cut through it.”
“Make an ice-bow.”