"Oh, the ice-boat is running away with Flossie and Freddie!" cried Nan, as she, too, saw what had happened.
While Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, Bert and Nan picked themselves up from where they had fallen and slid along the ice, the ice-boat, with Flossie and Freddie snugly tucked in among the blankets and robes, was skimming down the lake, blown by a strong wind.
At first the two small twins hardly knew what had happened. They had felt the ice-boat tilt to one side, they remembered that they had nearly fallen out, and then they had sailed on again. It was not until Flossie opened her eyes (she always shut them when anything surprising was happening) that she saw she and Freddie were alone in the _Bird_.
"Why! Why!" she exclaimed. "Where are Daddy and Mother?"
"Yes, and Bert and Nan?" added Freddie. "Where is everybody?"
Then the two small twins looked back over the icy lake and far behind them saw their father and mother, with Bert and Nan, standing on the ice and waving their hands.
"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."
"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.