"Tie this rope round me! _Quick!_ Bowline knot! I'll try an' crawl out to him!" Nixon was shrieking in his ear. "You can't alone! The ice is too rotten. You'd break through--and we mightn't be able to pull you out that way. Must make a chain! I'll go first. Crawl after me, Nix, and hang on tight to my feet!" Corporal Chase was already lying flat on his stomach, working himself out over the infirm ice where, here and there, within the white map of lines and circles traced by the skates of the small boys, were small holes through which the captive water heaved like Ma'am Baldwin's breast, under a thin, glassy fretwork. After him crawled Nixon, grasping his ankles in a strong grip. And, performing a like service for the patrol leader, came Coombsie, and after Coombsie Colin; the four forming a human chain, trusting their lives to the unstable, saline ice, and to the grip of each other. "Hold on tight, Nix! I see his head. We'll land him--yet!" Leon flung the last challenge between his set teeth at the white, porous ice and the little dark wells of bubbling water. Worming his body in and out between those fretting holes, he reached the glassy skirts of the larger fissure which imprisoned little Jack. There the nine-year-old victim's hands clutched frantically at the jagged edges of the encircling ice, while his screams for help grew weaker. To Jack himself they seemed not to rise above the cold, pale ring that hemmed him in. "_Hold--tight!_" The clenched word was passed along the chain as Leon at its head, hearing the tidal current beneath him sobbing, straining to be free, flung his hands out and grasped the victim's collar and shoulder, trying to lift him out of the hole. But with a groan the brittle ice surrounding it gave way: the foremost rescuer's body was plunged too into the freezing, brackish water. "We'll both go now--Jack an' I--unless Nix hangs on to me like a bulldog!" was the thought that stabbed him as an ice-spear while the dark tidal current, shot with glints of light like cruel eyes, engulfed his shoulders. But Nixon held on to his ankles, like grim death fighting grim Death himself. Not a link in that human chain parted, though the ice cracked ominously beneath it! And Leon, half submerged, battling for breath, clung steadfastly to Jack, as if indeed there was not water enough in the seven miles of tidal river to sunder them. Presently, while his comrades backed cautiously, dragging upon the lower part of his body, his head and arms reappeared, the latter clasping Ma'am Baldwin's grandson. A sob, half hysterical, burst from the gathering spectators on the bank. "If--if the Lord hadn't been with him, he couldn't have hung on to him that time!" muttered Captain Andy, the old life-saver, who had limped to the scene.