Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/32

Sergeant McKeever noted with a smile of approval that the small boy at his side asked no questions, but with absorbing interest watched each movement of the skilled steersman as he deftly guided the heavy scow into the channels and water-lanes that opened between the cakes. An hour passed and Connie wondered at the intense vigilance of the riverman, whose sharp eyes never for a moment left the floating ice-cakes. Gradually, a floe several acres in extent worked its way shoreward in the immediate forefront of the scow, leaving in its wake a wide strip of open water comparatively free of floating ice. To the boy’s mind this was a situation to be desired, and he watched in surprise as Rip Wade worked like a Trojan to force the scow out among the smaller cakes well to one side of the floating ice-island. For a long half-hour the boy was so busy with his fending pole that he had scant time for observation. And then, suddenly, the thing happened that impressed him as nothing else had, with the value of eternal vigilance. With a dull, grinding, crunching sound the huge floe shuddered and stopped; and the scow, which a moment before had seemed motionless, appeared to shoot forward like a thing of life.