“I guess he means that, too!” declared Leslie, uneasily. “Fred gets more reckless every year. I’m afraid something will happen to him yet.”
“It’s a good thing,” observed Dick, who had been looking around meanwhile, “that there’s a heap of old boards lying right close by, taken from that high fence. If he does break through we’ll need the same, you can just believe.”
“Why, it’s ten feet deep out in the middle!” asserted Peg.
“And the further he goes away from the shore the more the sheet of ice is bound to bend under him,” said Elmer. “If he keeps his word every fellow fasten to one of the boards, and be ready to shove it out.”
“He never could climb up on that thin ice, once his clothes get soaked,” Dick continued, “and before he could break his way to shore he’d be exhausted.”
The skater soon came around again, going very fast. He waved a hand flippantly to his friends on the shore, and changing his course suddenly darted directly out toward the middle of the big pond.
The other boys ran to the pile of boards, and each picked one of the planks up. Hardly had they done this than there was a shout of alarm, a crash, and a splash, and reckless Fred Bonnicastle had vanished from sight!
CHAPTER XXIV
A LESSON IN LIFE SAVING
“Oh! Fred’s broken in!” shouted Peg Fosdick, in alarm.
“And right in the middle of the pond, too!” echoed Leslie.