Ralph Henry Barbour

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”