"Keep it up a little longer!" Tug sung out, as he knelt on the edge of the ice, and carefully gathered in the clothes-line until he could almost clutch the end of the stronger rope. "I've almost got it! About two strokes more! All right! Now hold on with both arms, and we'll soon have you." Whereupon Katy seized the rope with him, and both together pulled as hard and as fast as they knew how.
The strange little ferry-boat and its passengers seemed to approach very slowly, but finally it came so near that Tug stopped hauling on the line, and knelt down in order to lean out and grasp the box after Katy should have pulled it a few inches closer. Jim, seeing this motion, forgot how delicate was the balance, and rose up, when in an instant the unsteady craft tipped, and the boy went backward into and under the blue lake. At any rate, so it seemed to the spectators; but the little fellow, making a despairing clutch as he went over, had gripped a runner of the sled, and a second later his face appeared close by the ice, where the fond sister, pale as he, seized his arm and helped him scramble out.
Chapter XIX.
ADRIFT ON AN ICE RAFT.
Meanwhile Aleck, startled by the upset of the sled and Jim's disappearance, had let go of his support. Now, seeing Jim safe, he was trying to regain it, when suddenly Tug saw him throw up his hand and sink out of sight.
Tug knew what that meant, and that there was not an instant to spare. Tearing off his coat—he had thrown aside his overcoat in the heat of the work before-he watched till he saw Aleck rising through the clear water, then dashed in, followed by the noble dog, and grasped his hair. Aleck hung in his hold a dead weight, as though life had gone; but Tug knew that the fatal end had not come yet, and that this was only the fainting of utter exhaustion and the cramping paralysis of cold. Cold! Tug had felt the dreadful chill striking through and through him the instant he had touched the water. Already it was clogging his motions and overcoming his strength with a fearful numbness that would fast render him powerless. And Aleck had been in that stiffening, paralyzing flood several minutes!
All this went through Tug's mind, as on a dark night a flash of lightning enters and leaves the pupil of the eye; it took "no time at all," and the instant he had hooked his fingers in Aleck's hair he shouted to Katy to shove out the sled where he might reach it. She did so, and by it drew both the lads to the ice, the brave rescuer grasping the friendly box and towing his senseless Captain.
Then a new difficulty presented itself. Aleck was perfectly helpless, and like a log in the water; or worse than that, for he would sink if Tug loosed his hold. How should they get him out?