He sneaked into his clothes, and descended the cold, creaking
staircase in his stocking-feet. Then he put on his rubber boots, and
stole out of the house like a burglar.
The wind would have wrecked any umbrella alive; but he cared naught
for the rain, and hurried down the street where the Twins were
sleeping the sleep of the righteous. He threw pebbles at their windows
till they were awakened; and after a proper amount of deliberation in
which each requested the other to go to the window, both went hand in
hand on their shivering toes.
When they had leaned out and learned what B.J. invited them to, they
reminded him that he was either crazy or walking in his sleep.
But B.J. answered back that they were either talking in their sleep or
were "cowardy calves."
The worst of all fools is the one that is afraid to take a dare; and
the Twins were--well, let us say they were not yet wide enough awake
to know what they were doing. At any rate, they could not stand the
banter of B.J., and had soon joined him in the soaking storm outside.
When the lake was reached the Twins were more than ever convinced that
B.J. was more than ever out of his head; for, instead of the smooth
mirror they had been accustomed to gliding over in the boat, they
found that the ice was covered with an inch of slush and water.
The sky above was not promising and blue, nor did the wind have a
merry whizz; but it laughed like a maniac, and shrieked and threatened
them, warning them to go back home or take most dreadful consequences.
B.J., however, would not listen to the advice they tendered him, but
went busily about getting the sails up and preparing the boat for the
voyage.
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.
Neatly as the boy Pretty ever skimmed a hurdle in a hurdle-race,
the boat skimmed the gulf of water. The ice bent and cracked
treacherously, and the water flew up in little jets where it broke;
but _Greased Lightning_ was off and away before there was ever a
chance to engulf her. And then the heart of the Twins could beat
again.
The boat was just well over the crack when she struck a patch of rough
ice and yawed suddenly. There was a severe wrench. B.J. and Reddy were
prepared for it; but Heady, before he knew what was the matter, had
slid off the boat on to the ice and on a long tangent into the crack
they had just passed.
He let out a yell, I can tell you, and clung to the edge of the
brittle ice with desperate hands.
He thought he had been cold before; but as he clung there now in the
bitter water, and watched B.J. trying to bring the obstinate boat
about and come alongside, he thought that the passengers on the
ice-boat were warm as in any Turkish bath.
After what seemed to him at least a century of foolish zigzagging,
B.J. finally got the boat somewhere near the miserable Heady, brought
the _Greased Lightning_ to a standstill, and threw the dripping Twin
the sheet-rope. Then he hauled him out upon the strong ice.
B.J. begged Heady to get aboard and resume the journey, or at least
ride back home; but Heady vowed he would never even look at an
ice-boat again, and could not be dissuaded from starting off at a
dog-trot across the lake toward home.
Reddy wanted to get out and follow him; but B.J. insisted that he
could not sail the boat without some ballast, and before Reddy could
step out upon the ice B.J. had flung the sail into the wind again, and
was off with his kidnapped prisoner. Reddy looked disconsolately after
the wretched Heady plowing through the slush homeward until his twin
brother disappeared in the distance. Then he began to implore B.J. to
put back to Lakerim.
Finally he began to threaten him with physical force if he did not.
B.J. fairly giggled at the thought of at last seeing one of those
mutinies he had read so much about. But he contented himself with
having a great deal to say about tacking on this leg and on that, and
about how many points he could sail into the wind, and a lot of other
gibberish that kept Reddy guessing, until the boat had gone far up the
lake.
At last, to Reddy's infinite delight, B.J. announced that he was going
to turn round and tack home. As they came about they gave the wind
full sweep. The sail filled with a roar, and the boat leaped away like
an athlete at a pistol-shot.
And now their speed was so bird-like that Reddy would have been
reminded of the boy Ganymede, whom Jupiter's eagle stole and flew off
to heaven with; but he had never heard of that unfortunate youth. He
had the sense of flight plainly enough, though, and it terrified him
beyond all the previous terrors of the morning.
As I have said before, different persons have their different
specialties in courage, as in everything else; and while Reddy and
Heady were brave as lads could well be in some ways, their courage
lay in other lines than in running dead before the wind in a madcap
ice-boat on uncertain ice.
The wind had increased, too, since they first started out, and now it
was a young and hilarious gale. It began to wrench the windward runner
clear of the ice and bang it down again with a stomach-turning thud.
In fact, the wind began to batter the boat about so much that B.J.
decided he must have some weight upon the windward runner, or it would
be unmanageable. He told Reddy that he must make his way out to the
end of the see-saw.
Reddy gave B.J. one suspicious look, and then yelled at the top of his
voice:
"No, thank you!"
The calm and joyful B.J. now proceeded to grow very much excited,
and to insist. He told Reddy that he must go out upon the end of
the runner, or the boat would be wrecked, and both of them possibly
killed. After many blood-curdling warnings of this sort, the disgusted
Reddy set forth upon his most unpleasant voyage.
He crept tremblingly along the narrow backbone until he reached the
crossing-point of the runner; there he grasped a hand-rope, and made
his way, step by step, along the jouncing plank to the end, where he
wrapped his legs around the wire stay, and held on for dear life.
Reddy's weight gave the runner steadiness enough to reassure B.J.,
though poor Reddy thought it was the most unstable platform he had
stood upon, as it flung and bucked and shook him hither and yon with
a violence that knew no rest or regularity. But, uncomfortable as he
was, and much as he felt like a seasick balloonist, he did not know in
what a lucky position he was, nor how happy he should have been that
it was not even riskier.
There is some comfort, or there ought to be, in the fact that a
situation is never so bad that it might not be worse.
B.J. was now so well satisfied with his live ballast that he began
once more to sing and make a mad hullabaloo of pure enjoyment. He
finally grew careless, and forgot himself and the eternal alertness
that is necessary for a good skipper. Just one moment he let his mind
wander, and that moment was enough. The boat, without warning to
either B.J. or Reddy, jibed!
Reddy, now more than ever astounded, suddenly found himself pitching
forward in the air and slamming on the ice. He slid along it for a
hundred feet or more on his stomach, like a rocket with a wake of
spray and slush for a tail. Reddy was soaked as completely as if
he had fallen into a bath-tub, and his face and hands were cut and
bruised in the bargain.
But his feelings, his mental feelings, were hurt even worse than his
flesh.
As for the reckless B.J., though he was not so badly bruised as his
unfortunate and unwilling guest, he was to suffer a still greater
torment. He, too, was thrown from the boat into the slush; and by the
time he had recovered himself the yacht was well away from the hope
of capture. But that wilful boat, the _Greased Lightning_, seemed
unwilling to let off her tormentor so easily.
For the astounded B.J., glaring at her as she ran on riderless, saw
her come upon some rough ice, and jolt and ditch her runner, and veer
until she had actually made a half-circle, and was heading straight
for him!
All this remarkable change took place in a very short space of time;
but a large part of that small time was spent by B.J. in absolute
amazement at the curious and vicious action of his boat. Then, as the
yacht began to bear down on him with increasing speed, he made a dash
to get out of its path; but his feet slipped on the wet ice, and he
could make no headway.
B.J. saw immediately that one of two things was very sure to happen;
and he could not see how either of them would result in anything but
terrible disaster to him.
For if he should stand still the runner-plank would strike him below
the knee and break both his legs like straws; besides, when he was
knocked over he was likely to be struck by the tiller-runner, which
would finish him completely.
If, on the other hand, he tried to jump into the air and escape the
runner, he stood a fine chance of being hit on the head by the boom,
which would deal a blow like the guard of an express-engine. Before
these two sickening probabilities the boy paused motionless, helpless.
It was the choice of frying-pan or fire.