tting his
wet feet and his cold, went again to the same place, with several of
his cronies. Tiger also accompanied the party, for his master seldom
went anywhere without him, except to school. The boys amused
themselves, as on the previous day, with shoving off large blocks of
ice into the stream, and with running rapidly over floating pieces that
were not large enough to bear them up. Sometimes they narrowly escaped
a ducking, so venturesome were they; and all of them got their feet
pretty thoroughly soaked.

It happened, after awhile, that a cake of ice upon which the boys were
all standing, got disengaged from the shore, unperceived by them, and
commenced floating into the river. They were all at work upon another
ice-block, trying to push it off, and did not notice that they were
going off themselves, until they were several feet from the shore. The
distance was too great to leap, and the water was so deep that none of
them dared to jump off from their precarious footing.

"Well, this is a pretty joke," said one of the boys, with some
appearance of alarm. "I should like to know how we are going to get
out of this scrape?"

"Get out of it?--who wants to get out of it?" replied Oscar. "I don't,
for one--we shall have a first-rate sail down into the harbor; shan't
we, Alf?"

"The tide will take us right under the bridge, and I 'm going to climb
up one of the piers," said Alfred, who appeared to be thinking more of
a way of escape than of the pleasures of the trip.

"Pooh, I shan't get off there," said Oscar. "I 'm in for a sail, and
if the rest of you back out, I shan't. You 'll go too, won't you, Tom?"

Before Tom could answer, they all began to notice that their ice-cake
gave signs that the burden upon it was greater than it could safely
bear. The swift current began to whirl it about in a rather
uncomfortable manner, and it was gradually settling under water. They
all began to be very much alarmed--all but Tiger, who did not quite
comprehend the situation of affairs, and who looked up into the boys'
faces with an expression of curiosity, as though he wanted to say:

"I wonder what mischief these little rogues are up to now?"

Several people who were crossing the bridge now noticed the perilous
situation of the boys, and stopped to look at them. As soon as Alfred
noticed them, he cried out slowly, at the top of his voice:

"Halloo, there! send us a boat, will you? we 're sinking!"

[Illustrati