Tom, Dick and Harriet/Chapter 15

BITTERLY cold, lowering day with a northeasterly gale blowing almost straight down the river, nipping fingers and ears and noses. Now and then a fitful flurry of snow, driving past like a miniature blizzard.

In front of the Ferry Hill landing two ice-boats, heads to the wind, sails snapping and wire rigging singing in the blasts; one with red hull and a cherry-and-black flag whipping from the masthead, the other glistening in new green and bearing the brown-and-white banner of Ferry Hill on high. About them some sixty boys from the rival schools, turning and twisting in and out on their skates in an effort to keep warm in the face of the biting gale. And over all a leaden, cheerless sky.

The race was to be windward and return, a distance of about fourteen miles. The starting-line was opposite the northern end of the boat-house, the turning-point some seven miles up the river at a place called Indian Head, where a small islet rose from the river near the west bank to serve as a mark. The boats were to finish opposite the boat-house. On the Snowbird were Joe Thurston and his friend Bob Cutler, while the Boreas held Dick and Chub. Whitcomb, with a small starting pistol in his gloved hand, was trying to push the crowd back so that the boats might swing into the wind at the signal.

The warning was given, the rival skippers declared themselves ready and the pistol barked, its sharp report being instantly whisked away on the wind. The slender noses of the two boats were turned, the sails filled slowly, and after a moment of seeming hesitation the Snowbird and the Boreas started slowly across the ice on the first tack to starboard, while behind them the rival groups shouted encouragement to the yachtsmen and defiance to each other. With every instant the boats gathered headway, gliding across the glassy surface like gaily hued dragon-flies above the surface of a pool. The white wings became taut under the steady wind and the windward runners left the ice as the boats heeled further and further. It was nip and tuck on that first tack, the boats keeping their relative positions until the farther shore was reached and the helms were put over. Around swung the crafts and pointed their noses toward the right bank of the river.

On the Boreas Dick and Chub lay on opposite sides of the backbone which divided the steering-box into halves. Dick held the tiller. They were wrapped in the warmest clothing they had been able to find, but it was far from warm enough. The wind came slanting against them and bored its way down necks and up sleeves. Fingers were already tingling and foreheads aching.

“Cold!” shouted Dick above the singing of the runners and the whistle of the wind. Chub nodded and made a grimace without taking his gaze from the Snowbird, which, some fifty feet away, was bowling along finely.

“She’s gaining,” said Chub presently. Dick turned and looked, glanced at his sails and eased the helm a little. Then it was time to go about again, since the shore was becoming dangerously near. The Snowbird was already turning, slowing for a moment as she pointed dead to windward and then springing away again as the gale slanted across the sails. The Boreas had lost and on this tack she was sixty or seventy yards behind her rival. The latter’s larger sail area was telling. Chub looked anxiously at Dick, but that youth was gazing across at the Snowbird, a hand held in front of his face to break the wind. When he turned there was a little frown on his face and he pointed the nose of the Boreas closer into the wind. For a while she seemed to be holding her own. Then the Snowbird went about again, this time on a mile-long reach made possible by a bend in the river. The Boreas was almost half a minute behind now and Dick was growling things to himself that Chub couldn’t catch. The wind seemed to be growing stronger, though perhaps it was merely that it had a broader sweep here where the stream turned toward the east.

“How fast?” asked Chub, his hand to his mouth.

“Twenty-five, I guess,” Dick shouted back.

Chub tried to whistle, but couldn’t. Beside them the ice was only a blurred surface that rushed by without form or substance, a grayish-green nothing, as it seemed, above which they were speeding with a rapidity that almost took the breath away. The wind shrieked and roared and strove to blow them from the box to which they were clinging. A sudden flurry of snow rushed down upon them, hiding the shore and the other boat from their sight, and blinding them so that for a moment they had to close their eyes.

“Look out for the shore!” cried Chub, with a gasp. There was an unintelligible word from Dick in reply as a gray shape suddenly sprang out of the snow-mist. “Hold hard!” he shouted. Chub had just time to obey when over went the tiller, there was a loud slur—r—r as the runners ground sideways against the ice and the Boreas threw herself about so suddenly that it was all the boys could do to keep their places. Then a quick leap forward and the boat was on the other tack and the snow-squall had passed. They looked eagerly for the Snowbird. She had gained some, but not much. The Boreas with a rush and a roar swept after her. It was a short tack this time, since Hopple Rock lay dead ahead off the west shore, and soon they were once more on the port tack, the windward end of the runner-plank standing high above the ice.

“There’s the Head!” said Dick.

Perhaps two miles up the frozen river a somber rock, tree crowned, arose from the gray ice like a rugged sugar-loaf. There was no mistaking it, although neither Dick nor Chub had ever journeyed so far up-stream. The boats must pass around it before they turned homeward. Dick, as best he could, shading his eyes with one mittened hand, studied the river. Then he moved the tiller slowly and cautiously until the boat was heeled so far over that Chub was forced to cling frantically to the backbone to keep from rolling off onto the ice. But the boat responded with increased speed. Chub, with the tears streaming from his eyes, held on, at once fearful and fascinated. Surely they were flying through air and that grayness flowing swiftly beneath them was cloud! It was hard to believe that they were on solid ice!

“Hold tight!” cried Dick.

Chub wondered how he could hold any tighter with his numbed and aching fingers. Then the windward runner dropped quickly to the ice, the Boreas swung about on her heel and Chub found himself rolling over against the backbone as the new tack began. Half a mile ahead the Snowbird, a low streak of red topped with a snowy spread of sail, was crossing in the opposite direction, the cherry-and-black flag at the masthead standing out as stiff as though starched.

“She’s got us beaten!” said Chub.

But Dick made no answer. He was calculating his chances. It was evident that the Snowbird was going to round the rock on the starboard tack. That meant, as Dick figured it out, that she would make two more reaches first. But to Dick it seemed that perhaps something was to be gained by hauling closer to the wind at the next turn and making a long tack to port until a point was reached near the east shore and slightly below the rock. From there he could round the mark with a short tack to starboard and start home on a long course with the wind abeam. It meant allowing the Snowbird to gain now in the hope of cutting down her lead later. So when the Boreas again came about Chub found that it was not necessary to hold on for dear life. The boat was headed closer into the wind and the steering-box was no longer canted at an alarming angle. The speed was less, but the boat demonstrated the fact that she could do fast work when close-hauled. The Snowbird crossed twice ahead of them during the next few minutes and finally, just as the Boreas was nearing the end of her final reach to port, she shot from around the island and turned homeward. Chub looked anxious and perplexed. Then over went the helm once more, there was a sharp swirl as the Boreas swung about and the black rock rushed toward them. As they skirted it the starboard runner was scarcely more than six yards from the gray boulders that lay about it. Then the wind was behind them and with a rush and a bound the Boreas started toward home. The Snowbird was, as Dick estimated, three quarters of a mile ahead, running fleetly on the opposite tack.

A stern chase is a long chase, they say, and the crew of the Boreas found it so. And yet, before half the distance to the finish had been reeled off, they knew that they were gaining slowly but consistently on their opponent. Joe Thurston was making the mistake of sailing too closely before the wind. Dick, on the other hand, strove to keep the wind well on his beam, and while, in order to do this, it was necessary to put the Boreas on shorter tacks, the result was warranting it. Little by little the green boat cut down the distance that separated her from the red. But with three miles still to run it seemed that the handicap was too large. The Snowbird looked then very much like a winner to Chub and he wondered how Harry would reconcile the defeat of the Boreas with the fact that her lucky Ferry Hill banner was flying from the masthead. If the boats had made speed going up the river they were simply flying now, although as the wind was behind them the difference was not very appreciable to the boys. Thirty miles an hour when you are scarcely a foot above the surface seems a terrific pace.

Two miles above Ferry Hill the Snowbird was scarcely a quarter of a mile ahead. She was starting on a long reach which, if all went well with her, would be the last but one to bring her to the line. The Boreas was on the opposite side of the river and as she swung across on a new tack it was evident that Dick was ready for any hazard. Chub found himself in danger of rolling off onto the ice, while Dick seemed every moment about to topple down upon him. The Boreas was like a boy standing on one leg and kicking the other into the air. Then another change of course and it was Chub’s turn to go up. There were moments when he vowed that if he reached home safely he would never trust himself again on an ice-boat with Dick Somes. But they were gaining every moment now and the quarter-mile lead was down to an eighth. Suddenly Chub, who was peering ahead at the Snowbird, gave an exclamation of surprise. The Snowbird, then in mid-stream, had suddenly left her tack and had headed again toward the east shore.

“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!