“Oh, they’ve jumped off and left us to sail the boat alone!” cried Freddie.  “Now I can steer!  Isn’t that good?”

Flossie was not quite sure that this was “good,” but, for a few seconds, she believed what Freddie had said—­that the others had jumped off the ice-boat.  She did not know that they had been spilled out, as Bert said afterward.

“Now watch me steer!” cried Freddie, crawling back toward the tiller, which was the last thing Bert had let go of, as he shot from the boat.

“Oh, can you?” asked Flossie.  “Do you think you can steer?”

“Of course I can,” was the answer.  “You just watch me.  I’ll make this boat go faster!”

“But you want to be awfully careful, Freddie.”

“Oh, I’m always careful, ain’t I?”

“Well, I s’pose you are—­most times,” answered Flossie, somewhat slowly.  She did not wish to hurt her twin’s feelings.

“Oh, I know what I’m doing,” was Freddie’s confident reply.  “You just watch me!  I’ll make this boat go just as fast as anything!”

As it had happened, a rope had become caught around the tiller, or handle, of the rudder, thus holding it so that the ice-boat sailed straight before the wind.  Otherwise it would have darted from side to side, and perhaps Flossie and Freddie would have been tossed out as the others had been.  But it so happened that they sailed along nicely, no one being at the helm.

Straight down the lake sailed the Bird with the two little twins aboard.  They had been a bit frightened at first, but now Freddie was thinking only of how he could steer the craft, and Flossie was waiting to see what her brother would do.

“I wonder what they’re waving to us for?” asked Flossie, as she looked back and saw the frantic signals of her father and mother, Bert and Nan.  “And they’re running after us, too!” she added.

“Maybe they want us to come back,” suggested Freddie.  But as the ice-boat was too far away for the older Bobbseys to make their voices heard by Flossie and Freddie, Mr. Bobbsey and the others could only wave their hands.

“We must catch that boat!” cried Bert.  “No telling what it will do to them if it upsets.  Come on!  Run, everybody!”

He set off as fast as he could go, his father with him, while Mrs. Bobbsey and Nan came along more slowly.

“I guess they want us to come back and get them,” said Freddie.  “They must be tired.  Well, I’ll steer the boat back and we’ll give them a ride.  Won’t it be fun, Flossie?”

“Ye-yes, maybe.  If you can do it.”

“Do what?”

“Steer the ice-boat back.”

“Of course I can do it!” cried Freddie.  “I can squirt water from my fire engine, can’t I?  And that isn’t any harder than this.”

Freddie did not know so much about ice-boats as he thought he did, and when he had crawled back to the tiller, still held fast in a loop of the rope, the small boy found it harder to move than he had expected.  Flossie stayed among the rugs and robes.