, though
extremely grateful, did not seem as astonished as he might have
otherwise been to be saved from such a death by a young girl who
apparently dropped from the skies just to rescue him.

In all of these experiences, when she was able to save men's lives at
the risk of her own, and was successful by reason of her quick wit and
self-forgetful courage, despite the grave chances she took, she never
had a single fright about her own safety, but simply flew across the
bay at any time of day or night at the sight of a speck on the water
which to her trained eye was a human being in danger.

Winter's hand had laid its glittering mantle of ice on Baker's Bay,
and on a glorious sunlit morning Ida was ready to start to Newport to
make some necessary purchases. When she was just about to push her
boat off the rocks she looked over the bay with the intent, piercing
glance for which she was famous among fisher-folk, who declared she
could "see out of the back of her head," and caught a glimpse of
uniforms, of struggling figures in that part of the bay which was so
shallow as to be always frozen in mid-winter, and which the soldiers
all knew to be dangerous to cross. But there were two of them, waving
their arms in frantic appeal for help, as they tried to keep from
going under in the icy water of the bay.

There was not a moment to lose. Ida put out from shore, rowed swiftly
to a point as near the drowning and freezing men as was possible, then
with her oars broke the ice sufficiently to make a channel for her
boat. As she came near to them she found that the insecure ice, melted
by the strong sun, had given way under them, while they were evidently
trying to take a short cut to Fort Adams from Newport.

It was hard work and quick work for Ida's experienced hands to get
them into the life-boat; and so nearly frozen were they that she was
obliged to rest on her oars, at the same time rubbing their numb limbs
as well as she could. Then she rowed for shore faster than she had
ever rowed but once before, and, as she told afterward:

"I flew for restoratives and hot water, and worked so hard and so
fast, rubbing them and heating them, that it was not long before they
came to life again and were sitting up in front of the fire,
apologizing for their folly, and promising that they would never again
give me such a piece of work to do, or cross the bay in winter at a
point where they knew it was a risk." She added, naively: "They w