The Twins were still pleading with B.J. to have some regard for the dictates of common sense, when he began to haul in the sheet-rope and put the helm down; and they had barely time to leap aboard before the boat was away.
They felt, indeed, that they were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose long spurting sprays of water.
The Twins reproached each other bitterly for coming on such a wild venture. But they did not know how really sorry they were till they got well out on the lake, where the wind caught them with full force and proved to be a very gale of fury. The mast writhed and squealed, and the sails groaned and wrenched, as if they would fairly rip the boat apart.
The world seemed one vast vortex of hurricane; and yet, for all the wind that was frightening them to death, the Twins seemed to find it impossible to get enough to breathe. It was bitter, bitter cold, too, and Reddy's hands and feet reminded him only of the bags of cracked ice they put on his forehead once when he had a severe fever.
B.J., however, was as happy as the Twins were miserable, and he yelled and shouted in ecstatic glee. Now he was a gang of cow-boys at a round-up; now he was a band of Apache Indians circling fiendishly around a crew of those inland sailors who used to steer their prairie-schooners across the West.
Before the Twins could imagine it, the boat had reached the opposite side of the lake, and it was necessary to come about. Suddenly the skipper had thrown her head into, the wind, the jib and mainsail were clattering thunderously, and the boom went slashing over like a club in the hands of a giant. Before the Twins had dared to lift their heads again, there was a silence, and the sails began to fill and the boat to resume her speed quickly in a new direction. In a moment the Greased Lightning was well under way along a new leg, and sailing as close as B.J. could hold her.
And now, as the Twins glared with icy eyeballs into the mist ahead, suddenly they both made out a thin black line drawn as if by a great pencil across the lake in front of them.
"Watch out, B.J.," they cried; "we are coming to an enormous crack."
"Hooray for the crack!" was all the answer they got from the intrepid
B.J.
And now, instead of their rushing toward the crack, it seemed to be flying at them, widening like the jaws of a terrible dragon. But the ice-boat was as fearless and as gaily jaunty as Siegfried. Straight at the black maw with bits of floating ice like the crunching white teeth of a monster, the boat held its way.