“Give way, Bill! Give way!”
“Ay, ay!”
Both spoke in low tones, hardly louder than the whisper of the ice around them.
By this time hundreds from the Foundry and the village were swarming upon the wharf and the steamboat.
“A hundred tar-barrels wouldn’t git up my steam in time to do any good,” says Cap’n Ambuster. “If them two in my skiff don’t overhaul the man, he’s gone.”
“You’re sure it’s a man?” says Smith Wheelwright.
“Take a squint through my glass. I’m dreffully afeard it’s a gal; but suthin’s got into my eye, so I can’t see.”
Suthin’ had got into the old fellow’s eye, — suthin’ saline and acrid, — namely, a tear.
“It’s a woman,” says Wheelwright, — and suthin’ of the same kind blinded him also.
Almost sunset now. But the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall. A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen.
The same white curtain hid the dark floating object from its pursuers. There was nothing in sight to steer by, now.
Wade steered by his last glimpse, — by the current, —by the rush of the roaring wind, — by instinct.
How merciful that in such a moment a man is
