The Rival Campers Ashore; or, The Mystery of the Mill

by Ruel Perley Smith

Then, of a sudden, there came a cry, that started somewhere on shore, ran all along the banks of the stream and came down to the boys at their play—a cry of alarm and warning. They looked about quickly. What was the danger? Persons on shore were pointing far up stream. The next instant, they discerned the whole great ice field, as far as they could see, in motion; crumbling about the shores and heaving up into hummocks here and there. Then they felt the ice beneath their feet moving. The deliverance of the stream from winter was at hand. The ice was going out.

The wild scramble for shore was a thing not to be forgotten. Some of the boys had travelled away up beyond the vicinity of the dam, where the logs were stored within a boom. It was perilous footing across these, for the few moments that it took to regain the shore. The water opened here and there, in which the logs churned and slipped dangerously.

It was every one for himself, then, and lucky to gain the bank without bruises, or a ducking—or worse. It was all so sudden, so terrifying, so confusing, that no one paused to see who else was in danger.

But when Henry Burns and Jack Harvey and George Warren, Tom and Bob and John Ellison had gained the shore, a cry came in that turned them. Away over toward the other shore, they espied Little Tim and Bess Ellison scrambling desperately. Where the girl had come from, they did not know—only that she was there now, and in peril.

There was no hope of their regaining the farther shore. Already the ice had opened up to such an extent that a great gap of running water lay between the two and that bank. Would they be able to make the flight across?

A cry of horror went up from shore now; for, even as the boy and girl seemed to be nearing safety, a part of the field on which they stood separated from the rest, and began its journey down stream. But, with this, there was added to the dread and dismay of those who gazed the fact that the sheet of ice held two more captives. Henry Burns and Harvey had rushed across the ice to the rescue, only in time to be trapped with Tim and Bess.

They could all swim, but the attempt must have been fatal. The open water that now lay between them and the shore was filled with small blocks of ice, ground by the larger masses. One could not make headway through that. Was there any chance? Little Tim saw one.

Grasping Harvey by an arm, he pointed to a seam in the ice. "Chop there, Jack!" he cried. "Here, Henry, take my ice-chisel; you're stronger than I am. If we can cut loose, perhaps we can work in shore on the small piece."

They saw the chance—a desperate one—and took it. Holding in his hands the chisel he had been working with, Harvey began chopping furiously at the seam in the ice. Henry Burns, with Tim's chisel, did likewise. A few moments' work sufficed. The section on which they stood, already half broken away, yielded to the efforts of the two. It cracked, severed from the larger part, teetered dangerously and drifted away. The four were floating on a junk of ice that would just support them.

The cry went up to get a rope; and John Ellison and George Warren darted down along shore toward the mill. Using the blades of the heavy long-handled chisels, as best they could, for paddles, Henry Burns and Harvey strove to force the heavy block of ice toward shore. They succeeded in a measure, but they were going steadily and surely down stream.