“Now, Jack,” said he, “pay attention; and no more blubbering.  There’s always plenty of time for giving way afterwards.”

As he spoke he scrambled on to the poles, and began to work himself and them over the ice, wriggling in a kind of snake fashion in the direction of the hole.  We watched him breathlessly, but within ten yards of the hole he stopped.  He evidently dared not go on; and the same thought seized all of us—­“Can he get back?” Spreading his legs and arms he now lay flat upon the poles, peering towards the hole as if to try if he could see anything of the drowning man.  It was only for an instant, then he rolled over on to the rotten ice, smashed through, and sank more suddenly than the skater had done.

The mill-girl jumped up with a wild cry and rushed to the water, but John Binder pulled her back as he had pulled me.  Martha, our housemaid, said afterwards (and was ready to take oath on the gilt-edged Church service my mother gave her) that the girl was so violent that it took fourteen men to hold her; but Martha wasn’t there, and I only saw two, one at each arm, and when she fainted they laid her down and left her, and hurried back to see what was going on.  For tenderness is an acquired grace in men, and it was not common in our neighbourhood.

What was going on was that John Binder had torn his hat from his head and was saying, “I don’t know if there’s aught we can do, but I can’t go home myself and leave him yonder.  I’m a married man with a family, but I don’t vally my life if——­”

But the rest of this speech was drowned in noise more eloquent than words, and then it broke into cries of “See thee!—­It is—­it’s t’ maester! and he has—­no!—­yea!—­he has—­he’s gotten him.  Polly, lass! he’s fetched up thy Arthur by t’ hair of his heead.”

It was strictly true.  The school-master told me afterwards how it was.  When he found that the ice would bear no longer, he rolled into the water on purpose, but, to his horror, he felt himself seized by the drowning man, which pulled him suddenly down.  The lad had risen once, it seems, though we had not seen him, and had got a breath of air at the hole, but the edge broke in his numbed fingers, and he sank again and drifted under the ice.  When he rose the second time, by an odd chance it was just where Mr. Wood broke in, and his clutch of the school-master nearly cost both their lives.

“If ever,” said Mr. Wood, when he was talking about it afterwards, “if ever, Jack, when you’re out in the world you get under water, and somebody tries to save you, when he grips you, don’t seize him, if you can muster self-control to avoid it.  If you cling to him, you’ll either drown both, or you’ll force him to do as I did—­throttle you, to keep you quiet.”

“Did you?” I gasped.

“Of course I did.  I got him by the throat and dived with him—­the only real risk I ran, as I did not know how deep the dam was.”