ould be thrown out. He could never get a full stroke.

Wade in the bow could do better. He jammed the blocks aside with his
boat-hook. He dragged the skiff forward. He steered through the little
open ways of water.

Sometimes they came to a broad sheet of solid ice. Then it was "Out with
her, Bill!" and they were both out and sliding their bowl so quick
over, that they had not time to go through the rotten surface. This was
drowning business; but neither could be spared to drown yet.

In the leads of clear water, the oarsman got brave pulls and sent the
boat on mightily. Then again in the thick porridge of brash ice they
lost headway, or were baffled and stopped among the cakes. Slow work,
slow and painful; and for many minutes they seemed to gain nothing upon
the steady flow of the merciless current.

A frail craft for such a voyage, this queer little half-pumpkin! A frail
and leaky shell. She bent and cracked from stem to stern among the
nipping masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. Any moment a
rougher touch or a sharper edge might cut her through. But that was a
risk they had accepted. They did not take time to think of it, nor to
listen to the crunching and crackling of the hungry ice around. They
urged straight on, steadily, eagerly, coolly, spending and saving
strength.

Not one moment to lose! The shattering of broad sheets of ice around
them was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their
chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the
eye seemed stout enough to bear a heavier weight than a woman's.

Not one moment to spare! The dark figure, now drifted far below the
hemlocks of the Point, no longer stirred. It seemed to have sunk upon
the ice and to be resting there weary and helpless, on one side a wide
way of lurid water, on the other half a mile of moving desolation.

Far to go, and no time to waste!

"Give way, Bill! Give way!"

"Ay, ay!"

Both spoke in low tones, hardly louder than the whisper of the ice
around them.

By this time hundreds from the Foundry and the village were swarming
upon the wharf and the steamboat.

"A hunderd tar-barrels wouldn't git up my steam in time to do any good,"
says Cap'n Ambuster. "If them two in my skiff don't overhaul the man,
he's gone."

"You're sure it's a man?" says Smith Wheelwright.

"Take a squint through my glass. I'm dreffully afeard it's a gal; but
suthin's got into my eye, so I can't see."

Suth