“I’ll be the savage Eskimo and chase you white men,” said Carleton.

“Are Eskimos savage?” asked Sunny Boy doubtfully.  “They don’t look savage in the geography book.  They look fat.”

“Of course they are savage,” said Carleton.  “Anybody who lives at the North Pole is savage.  Now when I chase you, you have to jump.”

Carleton made an awful face, such as he thought a savage Eskimo would make, and ran directly toward Sunny Boy, who jumped from his cake of ice to the ground.  But instead of landing on the ground, he landed in water!  Ice-cold water and up to his knees!  And at that moment the ice on which Carleton stood began to rock.

“The brook!” gasped Sunny Boy.  “It’s running over again!  It’s inside my rubber boots!”

The boys jumped from the ice cakes on which they stood, and those who had only rubbers on were wet at once to the knees.

“We’ll be drowned!” cried Perry Phelps.

Sunny Boy saw a barn in the next field, and he thought if they could only reach that they would be safe.

“We’ll all take hold of hands,” he said quickly.  “And don’t anybody let go.  There’s a barn up there, and we can go and stay in that.  Bob will come and find us, I know he will.”

The water kept rising higher and higher, and it was hard work to walk against the current.  Once Sunny Boy stumbled and fell, and once Carleton lost his balance; but the others pulled them up again.  When they reached the barn they found it was an old building, built very close to the brook and quite empty.

“It must have been the hay barn,” said Sunny Boy, who remembered what he had learned when he visited Grandpa Horton’s farm.  “Sometimes hay barns are built out in the fields so it won’t be so far to haul the hay.  I wonder how far off the house is?”

The house had burned down years ago, but Sunny Boy did not know that.  The boys were only too thankful to have a dry floor to stand on, and they huddled in one corner out of the keen March wind that blew in through the windows, for every pane of glass in the barn was broken.  Every few minutes they could hear the crash of a chunk of ice against the building, and once or twice Sunny Boy thought he felt something move.  The third time he saw Jimmie Butterworth looking at him.

“The barn is moving!” said Sunny Boy loud.

And it was.  The force of the water and the ice, driving against the poor worn out foundations, had loosened them, and the old barn was actually sailing.  The boys ran to the door.  All around them was water, water and ice.  The barn began to rock and to lean to one side a little.

“It will tip over!” cried Carleton.  “We’ll be drowned.”

“If we shout, some one will hear us and come and get us,” suggested Sunny Boy.  “We’ll have to yell!”

And yell they did, shouting with all the strength and power of their lungs.  They had almost given up hope of making any one hear when suddenly there came an answering shout and down in one corner of the field they saw something moving.