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.