"Never mind Polly!" he shouted. "Let her alone. Dick, and you other
fellows, just start off your own horses. Now, then! Get up, all of you!"

At this, every rider whipped up his horse or his mule, and spurred him
with his heels, and every darkey shouted, "Hi, dar!" and off they went,
rattledy-bang!

Polly went, too. There was never such an astonished little mule in this
world! Out of the gate they all whirled at full gallop, and up the road,
tearing along. Negroes shouting, chains rattling, snow flying back from
sixteen pounding hoofs, sled cutting through the snow like a ship at
sea, and a little darkey shooting out behind at every bounce over a
rough place!

"Hurrah!" cried Harry, holding tight to an upright pole. "Isn't this
splendid!"

"Splendid! It's glorious!" shouted Tom. "It's better than being a pi--"
And down he went on his knees, as the big sled banged over a stone in
the road, and Josephine's Bobby was bounced out into a snow-drift under
a fence.

Whether Tom intended to say a pirate or a pyrotechnic, was never
discovered; but, in six minutes, there was only one of the small darkies
left on the sled. The men, and this one, John William Webster, hung on
to the poles as if they were glued there.

As for Polly, she was carried along faster than she ever went before in
her life. She jumped, she skipped, she galloped, she slid, she skated;