“Pull up the board, Clyde!” Kenneth shouted to that member of the company, who was below when the shock came. The boy picked himself up, and pulled at the line which ran through a pulley made fast to the deck beams, and through a corresponding block on the centre-board. He tugged and tugged, but the weight of the wind on the sails jammed the board in its trunk, and he could not move it.
The canvas was lowered and then the board came up. Arthur took “His Nibs” and an anchor which he intended to drop overboard some distance from the yacht, when it would serve as a kedge to pull her over the obstruction, but before the mate got far enough to drop the hook, the sails, which had been raised meantime, caught the strong wind and hurried the yacht over the bar.
The “Gazelle” bounded forward.
“Heave over the anchor, Art!” Kenneth shouted, as he jumped to the tiller. But the iron was so heavy and the speed of the yacht so great that the slack was taken in before the mate could obey the command. In an instant “His Nibs” was capsized and the mate was swimming round in the cold water in company with the cakes of ice. He soon found that the water only reached to his waist, however, and he waded quickly to “His Nibs,” bailed the boat out, and paddled over to the “Gazelle,” which had meantime come up into the wind and was fast to the anchor dropped when the small boat capsized.
“Well,” said Arthur, as he scrambled aboard, “maybe I got excited, but I kept cool all right.” He chuckled at his wit, though his teeth chattered suggestively, and he had a blue look which his friends did not like to see. A sharp rub down, a change of clothing, and a cup of hot coffee brought him around in short order.
After this experience luck seemed to be with the boys. They sailed down the wide river, crossing from side to side as the channel dictated, but with favoring winds and bright skies. The great stream was never monotonous, especially to the crew of a sailing craft. It is full of surprises and interests; its channel turns and twists many times in a mile and changes every day.
But woe betide the vessel that depended on a misplaced beacon. It was this that nearly, so very nearly, ended the career of the “Gazelle” and her crew. At Goose Island, on the Missouri side, they ran aground, having laid their course according to a misplaced light.
It was a very serious situation which these youngsters had to face. The boat was caught hard and fast in a stream running from four to five miles an hour, carrying great chunks of ice that struck all obstacles with the force of battering rams. The bar was almost in midstream, too far away from shore to hail. A small boat of “His Nibs’s” strength would not live in the ice ten minutes. It was about as grim a predicament as could be imagined. All the sails were spread, the board raised, and the crew, with the exception of the man at the helm, shoved with oars for hours; but the “Gazelle” did not budge an inch.
Then they tried to take an anchor out, but “His Nibs” was no sooner put overboard than a big cake of ice came along and gave the light little craft such a terrific thump that the boys pulled her in hurriedly—they could not afford to run any risks with the only means they had of reaching shore.
Hour by hour the cold increased, until it got close to the zero mark, and as the weather became colder the streams supplying the Mississippi froze up, and the water of the great stream grew less and less.