Guert's allusion to his horses occasioned a general laugh; and laughter is little favourable to cool reflection. We all looked out on the solemn and silent night, cast our eyes along the wide and long reach of the river, in which we happened to be, and saw nothing but the calm of nature, rendered imposing by solitude and the stillness of the hour. Guert smilingly renewed his assurances that all was right, and moved on. Away we went! Guert evidently pressed his horses, as if desirous of being placed beyond this anxiety as soon as possible. The blacks flew, rather than trotted; and we were all beginning to submit to the exhilaration of so rapid and easy a motion, when a sound which resembled that which one might suppose the simultaneous explosion of a thousand rifles would produce, was heard, and caused both drivers to pull up; the sleighs stopping quite near each other, and at the same instant! A slight exclamation escaped old Mrs. Bogart; but Anneke and Mary remained still as death. “What means that sound, Guert?” inquired Herman Mordaunt; the concern he felt being betrayed by the very tone of his voice. “Something seems wrong!” “Something _is_ wrong,” answered Guert, coolly, but very decidedly; “and it is something that must be seen to.” As this was said, Guert stepped out on the ice, which he struck a hard blow with the heel of his boot, as if to make certain of its solidity. A second report was heard, and it evidently came from _behind_ us. Guert gazed intently down the river; then he laid his head close to the surface of the ice, and looked again. At the same time, three or four more of these startling reports followed each other in quick succession. Guert instantly rose to his feet. “I understand it, now,” he said, “and find I have been rather too confident. The ice, however, is safe and strong, and we have nothing to fear from its weakness. Perhaps it would be better to quit the river notwithstanding, though I am far from certain the better course will not be to push on.” “Let us know the danger at once, Mr. Ten Eyck,” said Herman Mordaunt, “that we may decide for the best.” “Why, sir, I am afraid that the rains and the thaw together, have thrown so much water into the river, all at once, as it might be, as to have raised the ice and broken it loose, in spots, from the shores. When this happens _above_, before the ice has disappeared below, it sometimes causes dams to form, which heap up such a weight as to break the whole plain of ice far below it, and thus throw cakes over cakes until walls twenty or thirty feet high are formed. This has not happened _yet_, therefore there is no immediate danger; but by bending your heads low, you can see that such a _break_ has just taken place about half a mile below us.”