Mum Robbins was winning the race, for he was three-quarters of the way over, when he heard a loud cry behind him, and a great chorus of louder cries on the shore. He did not dare to pause an instant, for he was getting out of breath, and it would not do to use any cake for more than one footstep. It was an awful half-minute, but the moment he reached solid ice he turned and looked. "Where's Bill Thatcher?"
Not running or jumping, and yet there he was, every inch of him. Bill had alighted on the edge of a cake which was still tetering from the effects of being trodden upon by Mum Robbins, and it had at once slipped from under him. His foot went through into the water, and before he knew it he was lying flat on his back. The next thing he was really sure of was that he was also lying on three separate cakes of ice, and that they wobbled dreadfully with every movement he made.
Bill yelled in spite of himself when the water rose above the cracks, and crept through to his skin. Here was a second panic among the many-sized mob alongshore. One shouted one thing and one another, and two small boys began to cry, but Pat Farrel was equal to the occasion.
"What for did he do that? Now, b'ys, we've got to go for some boords. There's a hape of 'em in front of owld Van Meter's fence. 'Tisn't far to bring 'em. We'll have him out o' that."
The work of transporting the best half of Deacon Van Meter's fencing boards was done in a sort of frenzy, and Aunt Hannah Van Meter came rushing out of the house to see about it.
"Drowning? Mum Robbins, did you say Bill Thatcher was drowning? I'll run down to the village and tell his mother."
"Ye'd betther take howld and kerry a big boord wid us," replied Pat Farrel, sturdily, and Aunt Hannah exclaimed:
"Me? Carry a board? That's what I'll do, then."
"Don't let his mother know he's dhrowned till afther we've saved him," said Pat. "Then she won't care."
All that time, short as it was, poor Bill lay there on his unsteady raft, and felt more and more sorry he had been such a fool, while every ten seconds somebody on the shore shouted to him: "Lie still, Bill. They're a-coming."