which had blocked the river for two months, had begun to move on the
day before, and Martin with his wife and baby--a child about a year
old--were on the other side of the river at the time. Early on that
morning there had been a temporary gorging of the ice about a mile
above the town, and, taking advantage of the comparatively free
channel, Martin had tried to cross with his wife and child, in his
boat.

The gorge had broken up almost immediately, as the river was rising
rapidly, and Martin's boat had been caught and crushed in the ice.
Martin had been drowned, but his wife, with her child in her arms, had
clung to the wreck of the skiff, and had been carried by the current
to a little low-lying island just in front of the town.

What had happened was of less importance, however, than what people
saw must happen. The poor woman and baby out there on the island,
drenched as they had been in the icy water, must soon die with cold,
and, moreover, the island was now nearly under water, while the great
stream was rising rapidly. It was evident that within an hour or two
the water would sweep over the whole surface of the island, and the
great fields of ice would of course carry the woman and child to a
terrible death.

Many wild suggestions were made for their rescue, but none that gave
the least hope of success. It was simply impossible to launch a boat.
The vast fields of ice, two or three feet in thickness, and from
twenty feet to a hundred yards in breadth, were crushing and grinding
down the river at the rate of four or five miles an hour, turning and
twisting about, sometimes jamming their edges together with so great
a force that one would lap over another, and sometimes drifting apart
and leaving wide open spaces between for a moment or two. One might as
well go upon such a river in an egg shell as in the stoutest row-boat
ever built.

The poor woman with her babe could be seen from the shore, standing
there alone on the rapidly narrowing strip of island. Her voice could
not reach the people on the bank, but when she held her poor little
baby toward them in mute appeal for help, the mothers there understood
her agony.

There was nothing to be done, however. Human sympathy was given
freely, but human help was out of the question. Everybody on the
river-shore was agreed in that opinion. Everybody, that is to say,
except Joe Lambert. He had been so long in the habit of finding ways
to help himself under diffic