ore like the Little Captain--brave and hopeful. Not that Grace and
Amy were cowards--far from it--but they had not the buoyant reserve
strength of their chums.

"Steady now, and I'll have you!" cried the man. He had come to a halt in
his boat on a big swirling cake, which was keeping pace with the
progress of the one containing the ice boat. "I'm going to make a line
fast to you," the man explained, "and take my end ashore. Then I can
haul you in. I don't dare risk taking you off in the boat. The ice is
breaking up too fast. Stand by now, to catch the line I'm going to
throw."

He was kneeling in his queer craft, and the girls could now see that it
was made for just such work as this. It was a small punt, capable of
being rowed or paddled. And to enable it to slide over the ice two
strips of iron, for runners, extended along the bottom from stem to
stern, just under the lower and outer edges of the boat's sides. In
other words it was a combined sled and boat. It was a type much used by
muskrat-hunters who have to seek their quarry on flooded meadows that
often freeze over uncertainly.

"Here you go!" shouted the man. "Make this line fast to the forward
part of your boat. How are the runners; well sunk in?"

"Yes!" answered Betty, glancing to make sure. The steel runners of the
cross-piece of the craft, as well as the steering plates in the rear,
had, because of the fact that the boat had been stationary so long, sunk
deep into the soft ice. The _Spider_ was firmly anchored.

"The rope will hold better on your craft, than on the ice itself," the
man explained after he had thrown it. "Have you made it fast?"

"Yes!" cried Mollie, who had assisted Betty in catching the line, and
taking a couple of turns about a strong cleat.

"Oh, do please hurry and--and save us!" panted Grace.

"I will, miss. Don't be skeered," said their rescuer kindly. The girls
could see that he was a burly lumberman, but no one they had ever met
before, as far as any of them could remember.

"I'll have you ashore soon," he added. "I'll make as good time back as I
can, though it's ticklish work, for the ice is going out fast. It's
early for it, too, and the river will freeze up again bad. But don't
worry. Your floe will hold until I get you all ashore. Just sit tight,
and don't worry!"

"But we--we can't help it," half whispered Amy.

The man, having tossed the rope which Betty and Mollie secured, now
arranged the coils in the bottom of h