Pull, Bill, till your oars snap! Out with your last
frenzies of vigor! For the little raft of ice, even that has crumbled
beneath its burden, and she sinks,--sinks, with succor close at hand!

Sinks! No,--she rises and floats again.

She clasps something that holds her head just above water. But the
unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it
about,--that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping
and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an
astonished sunbeam to alight upon.

"It is my love, my life, Bill! Give way, once more!"

"Way enough! Steady! Sit where you are, Bill, and trim boat, while I
lift her out. We cannot risk capsizing."

He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong arms.

A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last moment. It was a broken
oar with a deep fresh gash in it.

Wade knew his mark,--the cut of his own skate-iron. This busy oar was
still resolved to play its part in the drama.

The round little skiff just bore the third person without sinking.

Wade laid Mary Damer against the thwart. She would not let go her buoy.
He unclasped her stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way to
her heart. She opened her eyes and knew him.

"The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten some mother, down
stream," says Bill Tarbox, catching it.

All these proceedings Cap'n Ambuster's spy-glass announced to
Dunderbunk.

"They're h'istin' her up. They've slumped her into the skiff. They're
puttin' for shore. Hooray!"

Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and a half!

Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the
railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it.

All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously
frozen,--and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her
mother at Peter Skerrett's.

Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap'n Ambuster's
skiff. It was transported back on the shoulders of the crowd in
triumphal procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a
contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new
sculls and a new boat-hook,--indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave
little bowl.

"I'm afeard," says Cap'n Ambuster, "that, when I git a harnsome new
skiff, I shall want a harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go
to cruisin' round for a harnsome new Cap'n."

And now for the end of this story.