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.”

Suthin’ had got into the old fellow’s eye,—­suthin’ saline and acrid,—­namely, a tear.

“It’s a woman,” says Wheelwright,—­and suthin’ of the same kind blinded him also.

Almost sunset now.  But the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall.  A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen.

The same white curtain hid the dark floating object from its pursuers.  There was nothing in sight to steer by, now.

Wade steered by his last glimpse,—­by the current,—­by the rush of the roaring wind,—­by instinct.