Worming his body in and out between those fretting holes, he reached the glassy skirts of the larger fissure which imprisoned little Jack. There the nine-year-old victim's hands clutched frantically at the jagged edges of the encircling ice, while his screams for help grew weaker. To Jack himself they seemed not to rise above the cold, pale ring that hemmed him in.
"_Hold--tight!_" The clenched word was passed along the chain as Leon at its head, hearing the tidal current beneath him sobbing, straining to be free, flung his hands out and grasped the victim's collar and shoulder, trying to lift him out of the hole.
But with a groan the brittle ice surrounding it gave way: the foremost rescuer's body was plunged too into the freezing, brackish water.
"We'll both go now--Jack an' I--unless Nix hangs on to me like a bulldog!" was the thought that stabbed him as an ice-spear while the dark tidal current, shot with glints of light like cruel eyes, engulfed his shoulders.
But Nixon held on to his ankles, like grim death fighting grim Death himself. Not a link in that human chain parted, though the ice cracked ominously beneath it!
And Leon, half submerged, battling for breath, clung steadfastly to Jack, as if indeed there was not water enough in the seven miles of tidal river to sunder them.
Presently, while his comrades backed cautiously, dragging upon the lower part of his body, his head and arms reappeared, the latter clasping Ma'am Baldwin's grandson.
A sob, half hysterical, burst from the gathering spectators on the bank.
"If--if the Lord hadn't been with him, he couldn't have hung on to him that time!" muttered Captain Andy, the old life-saver, who had limped to the scene.
And, indeed, it did seem as if the Lord was with Leon Chase and made his strength in this desperate minute--like that of one of the famous knights of the Round Table--as the strength of ten because his heart was pure!--Purified of all but the desire to help and save!
"Starrie's got him! Starrie's holding on to him!" came in an exultant cry from a group of boys rigid upon the river-brink; in their midst gleamed the face, pale and fixed as the ice itself, of Godey Peck; and from Godey's eyes streamed the first ray of ardent hero-worship those rather dull eyes had ever known--leveled at the Tin Scouts.