Winter's hand had laid its glittering mantle of ice on Baker's Bay, and on a glorious sunlit morning Ida was ready to start to Newport to make some necessary purchases. When she was just about to push her boat off the rocks she looked over the bay with the intent, piercing glance for which she was famous among fisher-folk, who declared she could "see out of the back of her head," and caught a glimpse of uniforms, of struggling figures in that part of the bay which was so shallow as to be always frozen in mid-winter, and which the soldiers all knew to be dangerous to cross. But there were two of them, waving their arms in frantic appeal for help, as they tried to keep from going under in the icy water of the bay.
There was not a moment to lose. Ida put out from shore, rowed swiftly to a point as near the drowning and freezing men as was possible, then with her oars broke the ice sufficiently to make a channel for her boat. As she came near to them she found that the insecure ice, melted by the strong sun, had given way under them, while they were evidently trying to take a short cut to Fort Adams from Newport.
It was hard work and quick work for Ida's experienced hands to get them into the life-boat; and so nearly frozen were they that she was obliged to rest on her oars, at the same time rubbing their numb limbs as well as she could. Then she rowed for shore faster than she had ever rowed but once before, and, as she told afterward:
"I flew for restoratives and hot water, and worked so hard and so fast, rubbing them and heating them, that it was not long before they came to life again and were sitting up in front of the fire, apologizing for their folly, and promising that they would never again give me such a piece of work to do, or cross the bay in winter at a point where they knew it was a risk." She added, naïvely: "They were as penitent as naughty children, so I took advantage of it and gave them a lecture on things soldiers ought not to do, among them drinking whisky--even with the good excuse of being cold--and showing them quite plainly that this scare they had had came from that bad habit. They seemed very sorry, and when they got up to go, they saluted me as if I were their captain. Then off they went to the fort."