The timbers of the boat groaned and shook. The runners whined over the ice with an ever-increasing note. Ice-dust rose in a thin cloud from the sharp shoes, and the sunlight, in which the dust danced, flecked the mist with dazzling, rainbow colors. When the ice boat came about, it was with a leap and bound that seemed almost to capsize the craft. Janice had never traveled so fast before--or so she believed. It fairly took her breath, and she clung to the hand-holds with all her strength. "Hi, Janice!" yelled Marty, grinning from ear to ear. "How d'ye like it? Gittin' scaret?" She had to shake her head negatively and smile. But to tell the truth there was an awful sinking in her heart, and when one runner went suddenly over a hummock and tipped the ice boat, she could scarcely keep from voicing her alarm. CHAPTER XIX CHRISTMAS, AFTER ALL? Janice Day possessed more self-control than most girls of her age. She would not, even when her heart was sick with apprehension because of the story in the newspaper, give her cousin the opportunity of saying that she showed the white feather. She lay close to the beam of the ice boat, clung to the hand-holds, and made no outcry as the craft flew off upon the other tack. Had the wind been directly astern, the course of the _Fly-by-Night_ would have been smoother. It was the terrific bounding, and the groaning of the timbers while the boom swung over and the canvas slatted, that really frightened the girl. It seemed as though the mast must be wrenched out of the boat by the force of the high wind filling the canvas. And the shrieking of the runners! Janice realized that the passage of an ice boat made as much noise as the flight of a fast train. She could scarcely distinguish what Nelson Haley shouted at her, and he was so near, too. He pointed ahead. She stooped to look under the boom and saw a great windrow of snow--a huge drift more than six feet high--not half a mile away. This drift stretched, it seemed, from side to side of the lake. They could not see what lay beyond it. Janice expected the others would drop the sail and bring the ice boat to a halt. Some roughness in the ice, or perhaps a narrow opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in what looked to Janice to be an impassable barrier. "Oh! Oh!" she shrieked. "Won't you stop?" Nelson Haley smiled grimly and shook his head. Marty uttered a shriek of exultation as the ice boat bore down upon the drift. _He_ was quite speed-mad. "Hang on! hang on!" commanded Nelson Haley. Another moment and the frightened Janice saw the bow of the boat rise--as it seemed--straight into the air. Amid the groaning of timbers and the shrieking of the wind, the _Fly-by-Night_ shot up the steep slant of the drift and over its crest!