[“COMING! HOLD ON A LITTLE LONGER!”]
Followed some desperate minutes and then victory! Toby avoided a floe many yards in diameter, letting it pass while he fended the skiff away from it, and then dug the blades of his oars. An instant later the side of the skiff grated against the ice-cake and Toby pushed an oar across its surface. “Catch hold,” he panted, “and pull yourself toward me!”
The boy obeyed, but Toby realized the courage required to release the hold of those half-frozen fingers on the cake of ice. The boy grasped the oar and, still face-downwards, moved cautiously, fearfully toward the skiff. As his weight moved toward the edge, the ice-cake, scarcely three yards across at the widest place, began to dip.
“Faster!” cried Toby. “Grab the side of the boat!”
Over turned the ice-cake and the boy’s body settled with it into the water, but one straining hand was on the gunwale and Toby had secured a tight hold on his jacket. The skiff careened as the ice-cake slowly righted again, Toby pulled with every ounce of strength remaining in his body and, somehow, the boy came sprawling, inch by inch, into the boat to lie finally face-up in six inches of water on the bottom while Toby, scarcely knowing what he did, fixed his oars again and pulled mechanically for the shore. And as he labored with lungs bursting, muscles aching and eyes half-closed the perfectly absurd thought came to him that Tommy Lingard’s clothes would certainly need pressing to-morrow!
CHAPTER XXII
THINGS COME OUT ALL RIGHT
It was Saturday afternoon. Toby lay in bed in Number 22, very glad to be home again after two days of the unfamiliar and monotonous white walls of the infirmary. They had brought him home—for the little, poorly furnished room was home, after all—that forenoon, and he had partaken of a perfectly sumptuous dinner, the first in several days, and had gone peacefully to sleep after it. But he was wide awake now and feeling very comfortable and contented and beautifully rested. He had been, they had told him, a pretty sick boy for a day or so after Mr. Pennimore’s gardener and another man had rescued him and Tommy Lingard from a sinking boat at the mouth of the river. (For it seemed, although Toby didn’t pretend to understand it, that he had lost all sense of direction and had rowed toward the Sound. Either that or his tired arms had not been able to prevail over the current.) But he was quite all right now. Of course, his head hurt a bit and his cold wasn’t quite all gone, and he was still a little stiff in places, but aside from those failings he felt fine!
The window was open a trifle and through it came sounds that brought a puzzled frown to Toby’s forehead. They seemed to suggest something not so pleasant as being at home again in his own bed. Then he remembered and the frown disappeared. They were playing Broadwood down there on the rink and if all this had not happened he would have been there too, guarding his goal in the big game of the year. But, somehow, he didn’t care so awfully much. Frank would play in his place, and Frank deserved it. He owed Frank at least that much reparation for the unjust suspicions he had of him. On the whole, he was glad that Frank had got the position back again, and he only hoped that he would play such a dandy game there that the hated Broadwood would go home scoreless!