Help, now!--now, men, if you are to save! Thrust, Richard Wade, with your boat-hook! Pull, Bill, till your oars snap! Out with your last frenzies of vigor! For the little raft of ice, even that has crumbled beneath its burden, and she sinks,--sinks, with succor close at hand!
She clasps something that holds her head just above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it about,--that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam to alight upon.
"It is my love, my life, Bill! Give way, once more!"
"Way enough! Steady! Sit where you are, Bill, and trim boat, while I lift her out. We cannot risk capsizing."
He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong arms.
A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last moment. It was a broken oar with a deep fresh gash in it.
Wade knew his mark,--the cut of his own skate-iron. This busy oar was still resolved to play its part in the drama.
The round little skiff just bore the third person without sinking.
Wade laid Mary Damer against the thwart. She would not let go her buoy. He unclasped her stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way to her heart. She opened her eyes and knew him.
"The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten some mother, down stream," says Bill Tarbox, catching it.
All these proceedings Cap'n Ambuster's spy-glass announced to Dunderbunk.
"They're h'istin' her up. They've slumped her into the skiff. They're puttin' for shore. Hooray!"
Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and a half!
Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it.
All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously frozen,--and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett's.
Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap'n Ambuster's skiff. It was transported back on the shoulders of the crowd in triumphal procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook,--indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little bowl.