Freddie knew enough about boats to be sure that to steer one the tiller ought to move from side to side.  So, finding that the rope, which was fast to the sail, was keeping the rudder handle from moving, he began to loosen the coils.

As soon as he did that the rudder moved from side to side, and this, of course, made the ice-boat do the same thing.

“Oh, dear!” cried Flossie, “don’t jiggle it so, Freddie!”

“I—­I can’t—­help it!” chattered Freddie, his words coming jerkily, for he was being “jiggled” himself, as the rudder shook from side to side in his hand.  “This—­this is the way to—­to steer an ice-boat.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Flossie announced, “It makes me homesick!”

“Do you mean—­seasick?” asked Freddie, trying his best to hold the tiller still.

“No, I mean homesick!  I want to go home!”

“But we’re having a nice ride, Flossie.”

“I don’t care!  I want papa and mamma!  I can’t see them now!”

The ice-boat, sailing down the lake, had turned around a point of land, and this hid from view the rest of the Bobbsey family.

“I’ll turn around and go back and get them,” Freddie said.  By this time he had taken the rope from the tiller, so the rudder handle moved freely from side to side.  And then, all of a sudden, the Bird shot ahead more swiftly than before.

The wind was blowing more strongly, and when Freddie moved the rudder he steered the ice-boat so that the wind sent it straight ahead instead of a little to one side.

“Oh! oh!” cried Flossie, “this is too fast!  How can we stop the ice-boat, Freddie?”

“I—­I don’t know,” answered the little boy.  “Don’t you like to go fast, Flossie?”

“Not so fast as this.  I can’t make my nose work—­I can’t get any air!”

Indeed they were sailing even more swiftly than when Bert was steering, and Flossie was frightened.  So was Freddie, but he was not so quick to say so.

“Please stop the boat!” cried Flossie again.

“Well, I’ll try,” promised Freddie.  “I guess this is the rope you pull on,” and he took hold of the one fast to the end of the sail—­the rope that kept the big piece of white canvas from blowing away.

Freddie pulled on this, but it could not have been the right rope, or else he pulled it the wrong way, for, in an instant, the ice-boat seemed to “stand on its ear,” as Bert spoke of it afterward.  Flossie and Freddie were almost tossed out.

“Oh, don’t do that!” cried the little girl.

“I—­I didn’t mean to,” Freddie told her.  “I guess I pulled on the wrong rope.  Here’s another.  I’ll try that.”

By this time the ice-boat was more than two miles down the lake, for the wind was blowing hard and the Bird sailed swiftly.  The children could not see their father, mother, Bert or Nan now.  They would soon be at the end of the lake, and before them Flossie and Freddie could see big drifts of snow near the edge of the frozen lake and between it and the forest beyond.