Well, me and Jonadab was “it” for quite a spell. Phil had all the fun, and I guess he enjoyed it. If he'd stopped right then, when the fishing was good, I cal'late he'd have fetched port with a full hold; but no, he had to rub it in, so to speak, and that's where he slopped over. You know how 'tis when you're eating mince-pie--it's the “one more slice” that fetches the nightmare. Phil stopped to get that slice. He kept whizzing up and down that river till Jonadab and me kind of got over our variousness. We could manage to get along without spreading out like porous plasters, and could set up for a minute or so on a stretch. And twa'n't necessary for us to hold a special religious service every time the flat-iron come about. Altogether, we was in that condition where the doctor might have held out some hopes. And, in spite of the cold, we was noticing how Phil was sailing that three-cornered sneak-box--noticing and criticising; at least, I was, and Cap'n Jonadab, being, as I've said, the best skipper of small craft from Provincetown to Cohasset Narrows, must have had some ideas on the subject. Your old chum, Catesby-Stuart, thought he was mast-high so fur's sailing was concerned, anybody could see that, but he had something to larn. He wasn't beginning to get out all there was in that ice-boat. And just then along comes another feller in the same kind of hooker and gives us a hail. There was two other chaps on the boat with him. “Hello, Phil!” he yells, rounding his flat-iron into the wind abreast of ours and bobbing his night-cap. “I hoped you might be out. Are you game for a race?” “Archie,” answers our skipper, solemn as a setting hen, “permit me to introduce to you Cap'n Jonadab Wixon and Admiral Barzilla Wingate, of Orham, on the Cape.” I wasn't expecting to fly an admiral's pennant quite so quick, but I managed to shake out through my teeth--they was chattering like a box of dice--that I was glad to know the feller. Jonadab, he rattled loose something similar. “The Cap'n and the Admiral,” says Phil, “having sailed the raging main for lo! these many years, are now favoring me with their advice concerning the navigation of ice-yachts. Archie, if you're willing to enter against such a handicap of brains and barnacles, I'll race you on a beat up to the point yonder, then on the ten mile run afore the wind to the buoy opposite the Club, and back to the cove by Dillaway's. And we'll make it a case of wine. Is it a go?” Archie, he laughed and said it was, and, all at once, the race was on. Now, Phil had lied when he said we was “favoring” him with advice, 'cause we hadn't said a word; but that beat up to the point wa'n't half over afore Jonadab and me was dying to tell him a few things. He handled that boat like a lobster. Archie gained on every tack and come about for the run a full minute afore us.