“Somebody carried off, — perhaps a woman,” Wade thought. “Not — No, she would not neglect my warning! Whoever it is, we must save her from this dreadful death!”
He sprang on board the little steamboat. She was swaying uneasily at her moorings, as the ice crowded along and hammered against her stem. Wade stared from her deck down the river, with all his life at his eyes.
More than a mile away, below the hemlock-crested point, was the dark object Perry had seen, still stirring along the edges of the floating ice. A broad avenue of leaden-green water wrinkled by the cold wind separated the field where this figure was moving from the shore. Dark object and its footing of gray ice were drifting deliberately farther and farther away.
For one instant Wade thought that the terrible dread in his heart would paralyze him. But in that one moment, while his blood stopped flowing and his nerves failed, Bill Tarbox overtook him and was there by his side.
“I brought your cap,” says Bill, “and our two coats.”
Wade put on his cap mechanically. This little action calmed him.
“Bill,” said he, “I’m afraid it is a woman, — a dear friend of mine, — a very dear friend.”
Bill, a lover, understood the tone.
“We’ll take care of her between us,” he said.
The two turned at once to the little tub of a boat.
