The wind, freshening all this time, now As she "rears," or heels over, she seems to pours down over the banks of the Hud-rise for an actual flight into the heavens; son in strong gusts. The sky is partly covered with clouds; the gray desert of winter has lost its gleams of color; snow-squalls enshroud the dark headlands, and the grim face of Nature frowns with stormy gloom. It is a time to draw up to the fire and talk of storms, while one is basking in luxury and warmth. But you are launched upon the wind; the light snow whirls upward in the lee of the mainsail, and she seems a spirit of the air in a cloud, sweeping onward like a whirlwind. The wind howls in the rigging, the ice crashes, the runners ring, and you hold on to the shrouds in a nervous frenzy of excitement. As she turns in her sudden motions, you feel as if your body were trying to fly on in some swift tangential course, even though your hands and feet remain. Space opens freshly before you every moment as a strange, devouring void, and you fly into it with a wild, erratic motion, seemingly beyond the rule of human will or natural law. You are not shut up in a ponderous train—a whole world of material, roaring, jolting matter. Here you fly alone through the keen air and the flashing sunshine, with the speed of a bird soaring in the sky. But your eyes are not those of an eagle, and they see things changed by the rapid passage. Objects seem melted down and drawn out into blurred, elongated forms; shapes and colors are lost, and things look blue. Now the wind lulls again; you listen to the roaring of the gust sweeping up the bluff and through the bare forest; then a louder roar comes on, as an express train thunders out of the tunnel. The windows are filled with eager faces, and waving handkerchiefs stream in the wind; the engine blows a shrill challenge, and you wave an acceptance. But the wind plays you false, and the train passes in triumph. Then all at once you get the breeze and move up; you skim along with ease compared to the thundering tread of the iron horse, and you gain on him. As you come abreast, the windows and platforms are crowded with excited people; you hold on your course and, with the next gust, pass them as though they were slowing up, while they cordially salute your victory with more waving and whistling. You soon lose sight and sound of them; the wind roars in the rigging; as the yacht sways in her course, her extreme speed makes her divergences appear like leaps from side to side-a mad, reeling motion. she slides a little sidewise with a wild, tremulous motion, and you wonder where she will alight. Now she rears again, and at that moment you have to wear away to avoid some rough ice. The descent and the swing combined seemed to have destroyed the force of gravity; your body seems to have lost all material existence, and you swing through space with a rush that makes you shiver. You have been in the shadow of the clouds, but now, in a single instant, you fly into a sunny world, gleaming sharply, faintly, with prismatic hues: you are dashing through a windrow, the ice flies and the air seems filled with a shower of diamonds. Even while they fall you have crossed the sunny world and entered another of storms. The whole face of nature is animated; the hills grow up while you stare, and come rushing at you with a new and awful grandeur-a feeling of omnipotence. But they pass by, and subside again, as if by a magic spell. Suddenly something has happened; your feet have flown out from the plank and your body swings out by the arms as if whirling on a trapeze; the yacht has run over a mound of ice and snow a foot or more high; as this tossed her into the air, the wind on the quarter swung her stern around and headed her across the wind, straight for a high mass of broken ice. And she keeps right on, through all these gyrations, with such speed that you have to cling with all your might to prevent her from flying from under you. The captain, however, keeps his head, and in a moment wears her away again, with another of those inconceivable swings and sweeps of a bird. Her sudden starts and turns make her a living thing of the air, full of wild, swift, and graceful motions, and a wayward willfulness that is startling. Now she dodges a mound with the clear determination of certainty; then, in the midst of barriers that would crush us all, she sways and reels and roars as if in the confusion of inevitable destruction. But the spell of magic is upon her, and guides even her wildest flights. The horizontal or the upward tendency of every atom destroys again and again your sense of weight; your body seems the subject of unseen, unknown powers; and a keen, shivering glee flashes through your soul. Such a flight over the earth is among heroic feats, and it kindles your nature with the fire of valor. But the flight is done, and you must stop the triumph of the wing; you descend from the clouds of snow and the roaring storm on which you flew as an eagle on a whirlwind; you return to the common earth, to the long, narrow valley of ice, dull and gray between its headlands, now flaming out in the cold, clear, silent evening. Ice-yachting seems to be the acme of recklessness. In its early days, when the men were less skillful, and the yachts, being ill-balanced, were less manageable, accidents sometimes occurred. But now that experience has improved the methods of handling and building, ice-yachting may be called a safe sport. Serious accidents are almost unknown, and yachtsmen do not hesitate to sail with their families under reasonable conditions of ice and weather. The iceyacht is the fastest object moving on the earth; but if any one find her motions too slow, let him put on skates, and holding one end of a long rope made fast to the boom, take a tow behind her on smooth ice; when she is under full speed put her about sharply, and give him a swing before he lets go the rope, as if from a sling. He will compare himself to a bullet. The handling of an ice-yacht differs from the sailing of other crafts in many particulars. Her sails are always trimmed flat aft; but if a wind on the beam is so strong as to make her either slide or "rear up" too much, the boom is sometimes let off a foot. The steering of an ice-yacht is very surprising to a water sailor. The tiller generally moves as easily as a straw, unless the rudder catches in a crack or runs through snow or rough ice. Her extreme quickness and delicacy in obeying the helm is one of her chief attractions; but the helmsman must have a cool head, a quick eye, and a steady hand. Otherwise she may whisk about with such sudden and erratic motions as to throw all hands into eternity. Nevertheless, she may be turned about with extraordinary quickness if she is brought gradually to the shortest part of the curve,-somewhat as a whip-lash may turn very sharply without snapping. This gradual turning is very necessary in a stiff breeze; for if she be put about too suddenly her momentum causes her to slide sidewise, and to lose almost all her headway. Pushing the yacht is the most prosaic experience. But it is often required in light, flawy wind and on a snowy surface where the friction is great, to prevent her from stopping and her runners from settling in the ice. Steering among obstructions and over rough ice or cracks requires much ex In perience, coolness, and promptness. going over a rough place, she is first headed so as to spill the wind and relieve her of strain; she is then headed as straight across a crack as possible, that the runners may not slip into it, and that they may both cross it at once. In going over broken ice where the cakes overlie one another, one or both runners must be run on the highest places to raise the plank above the obstructions. It is better to jump down from such high mounds or cakes than to attempt to run up their steepest side; for, if the points of the runners catch on the edge of a cake or in a snow-bank, the yacht will be brought up so suddenly that her rigging may all go by the board, or the whole craft may be wrecked. In approaching dangerous places, it is sometimes necessary to stop very quickly. The usual mode of stopping is to luff her up and run her into the "wind's eye" till all her headway is lost. There are two modes of stopping quickly. When sailing close to the wind, luff her till her headway is diminished somewhat, and then turn the rudder quickly square across. This acts then as a brake, scraping sidewise on the ice. The strain on the boat, of course, is very great, and necessity alone justifies this maneuver. When sailing free, stopping suddenly is more difficult. Pay her off to jibe, and as the boom, in swinging over, gives her a jerk, at exactly the same instant turn the helm quickly square across, pointing, of course, to leeward. This jerk hauls her stern suddenly around and she turns about into the wind, while the rudder is kept square across to act as a brake. If the speed be not very high, the yacht may be stopped in the space of two lengths by this maneuver. An ice-yacht is temporarily anchored by turning her head to the wind, lighting up the jib-sheet, and turning the rudder straight across. The jib-sheet should always be cast off, to prevent her from getting away alone. On one occasion, when the fleet had come to anchor in a cove and the men were loitering about the yachts, one yacht ran away. The jib-sheet was not cast off, and a gust of wind had started her alone on a wild and dangerous course. She first stood off from shore, but suddenly put about. She came straight in, and in a moment struck another yacht and made two complete wrecks, but fortunately did no other harm. An ice-yacht is got under way by trimming the jib-sheet and then swinging her stern around and pushing ahead till her sails fill. When she is temporarily laid up, all her run ners are placed on pieces of board, the tiller is removed from the rudder-post, and her sails are protected by canvas covers. The crew stand on the windward runner and hold on to the shrouds. This is the only proper position for them; for there they not only give their weight as ballast on the windward side, but also relieve the leeward runner of extra weight added to the pressure given by the sail. And, moreover, it is the safer side, since the spars, if carried away, cannot fall on them, and if she capsize, they are not under the sails. In a light wind, only the helmsman lies in the box; but when a stiff breeze makes her slide around, more weight is required on the rudder to make it take hold of the ice. The best management of an ice-yacht can scarcely be described; it varies with different courses and must be learned by intelligent practice. In general terms, of course, her actions are like those of other sail-boats; but, in some particulars, her special features necessitate a different handling. She sails closer to the wind than any other craft; a good ice-yacht stands up within four points, | and she goes about so quickly that she loses but little of her headway. In beating to leeward, the ice-yachting expression for sailing with a free wind,-when she has her full speed, pay her off nearly on her true course for a little way; then should she begin to lose much of her headway, luff, or come up a little more to get up headway again. She is thus kept always at high speed, yet makes many short runs nearly on her true course. The higher the wind, the more she can run free. She always jibes on this course, and, if the wind favors, makes a long turn. To "bring her to" at a given point while running free, reach a point many lengths directly to windward of it; then head her directly with the wind till she slows up to the same speed as the wind, turn her suddenly into the wind till she is nearly stopped, and then turn the rudder across as a brake. A sharp lookout must be kept for cracks and rough places in the ice, for an ice-yacht cannot go safely at full speed over obstructions more than a very few inches high. When sailing over such places, she slows up and picks her way the crack, the water flies, but if the forward ends of the runners rise over the farther edge, she will plow through it all. A yacht and her crew may pass over a wide crack among impassable mounds and windrows. But it sometimes occurs that a yacht flies over dangerous spots without either care or misfortune, and often in these fool-hardy or unavoidable feats she is brought up all stand-by backing her into it till the boom hangs ing against some obstacle, the rigging parts, the spars go by the board, and she looks in an instant like a hopeless wreck. The crew meanwhile continue the course alone, each according to his own personal over the farther edge of the ice; one or two men cross, by holding to the boom for safety, and lift the stern up on the ice. She is then backed still farther, till the runners also are raised on the farther edge of the capacity for sliding on ice. "Jumping" a crack is one of the liveliest maneuvers in ice-yachting. If the crack in the old ice be an actual, open crevice, she can jump but a few feet, even with the help of a brisk wind. For, if either runner catches on the farther edge of the crack, everything will come down. But if the crack be covered with even thin ice, or if the farther edge be lower than the edge she leaves, she may cross more safely. She dashes square across JUMPING A CRACK. ice; then the rest of the crew cross over on the bowsprit. The rules of sailing adopted for regattas are the same as those of the New York Yacht Club, varied slightly to suit the requirements of ice-yachting, and extended to include a provision for pushing the boat under certain circumstances. In a puffy, flawy wind, of course a yacht may stop; and if she is allowed to remain stationary the runners settle into the ice so |