"Well, come on, if you're going to explore," said Nelson Baker. "What are you staring at, Sunny Boy?"
"Ice," said Sunny Boy, pointing up the stream. "Isn't that ice all over everything?"
The boys looked. A little distance away the ground seemed to be covered with cakes of ice.
"Hurry up!" shouted Perry. "It's an ice field. We can have heaps of fun playing."
The others hurried after Perry, and when they came to the field where the ice was they found that the brook was almost a river at this point. It had cut a wide, new gash in the bank and had overflowed, leaving mud and water and ice in great quantities and cutting the trunks of little trees that stood in the way. The boys scrambled up on the ice and pretended that they were at the North Pole.
"I'll be the savage Eskimo and chase you white men," said Carleton.
"Are Eskimos savage?" asked Sunny Boy doubtfully. "They don't look savage in the geography book. They look fat."
"Of course they are savage," said Carleton. "Anybody who lives at the North Pole is savage. Now when I chase you, you have to jump."
Carleton made an awful face, such as he thought a savage Eskimo would make, and ran directly toward Sunny Boy, who jumped from his cake of ice to the ground. But instead of landing on the ground, he landed in water! Ice-cold water and up to his knees! And at that moment the ice on which Carleton stood began to rock.
"The brook!" gasped Sunny Boy. "It's running over again! It's inside my rubber boots!"