It was all so sudden, so terrifying, so
confusing, that no one paused to see who else was in danger.

But when Henry Burns and Jack Harvey and George Warren, Tom and Bob and
John Ellison had gained the shore, a cry came in that turned them. Away
over toward the other shore, they espied Little Tim and Bess Ellison
scrambling desperately. Where the girl had come from, they did not
know--only that she was there now, and in peril.

There was no hope of their regaining the farther shore. Already the ice
had opened up to such an extent that a great gap of running water lay
between the two and that bank. Would they be able to make the flight
across?

A cry of horror went up from shore now; for, even as the boy and girl
seemed to be nearing safety, a part of the field on which they stood
separated from the rest, and began its journey down stream. But, with
this, there was added to the dread and dismay of those who gazed the
fact that the sheet of ice held two more captives. Henry Burns and
Harvey had rushed across the ice to the rescue, only in time to be
trapped with Tim and Bess.

They could all swim, but the attempt must have been fatal. The open
water that now lay between them and the shore was filled with small
blocks of ice, ground by the larger masses. One could not make headway
through that. Was there any chance? Little Tim saw one.

Grasping Harvey by an arm, he pointed to a seam in the ice. "Chop there,
Jack!" he cried. "Here, Henry, take my ice-chisel; you're stronger than
I am. If we can cut loose, perhaps we can work in shore on the small
piece."

They saw the chance--a desperate one--and took it. Holding in his hands
the chisel he had been working with, Harvey began chopping furiously at
the seam in the ice. Henry Burns, with Tim's chisel, did likewise. A few
moments' work sufficed. The section on which they stood, already half
broken away, yielded to the efforts of the two. It cracked, severed from
the larger part, teetered dangerously and drifted away. The four were
floating on a junk of ice that would just support them.

The cry went up to get a rope; and John Ellison and George Warren darted
down along shore toward the mill. Using the blades of the heavy
long-handled chisels, as best they could, for paddles, Henry Burns and
Harvey strove to force the heavy block of ice toward shore. They
succeeded in a measure, but they were going steadily and surely down
stream.

It seemed ages before John Ellison