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.