The grating, or grinding of the ice above us, cake upon cake, now sounded like the rushing of heavy winds, or the incessant roaring of a surf upon the sea-shore. The piles were becoming visible, by their height and their proximity, as the ragged barriers set slowly but steadily down upon us; and the whole river seemed to me to be in motion downwards. At this awful instant, when I began to think it was the will of Providence that Anneke and I were to perish together, a strange sound interrupted the fearful natural accessories of that frightful scene. I certainly heard the bells of a sleigh; at first they seemed distant and broken--then, nearer and incessant, attended by the rumbling of runners on the ice. I took off my cap and pressed my head, for I feared my brain was unsettled. There it came, however, more and more distinctly, until the trampling of horses' hoofs mingled in the noise. “Can there be others as unhappy as ourselves!” exclaimed Anneke, forgetting her own fears in generous sympathy. “See, Littlepage!--see, _dear_ Cornelius--yonder surely comes another sleigh!” Come it did, like the tempest, or the whirlwind; passing within fifty feet of us. I knew it at a glance. It was the sleigh of Herman Mordaunt, empty; with the horses, maddened by terror, running wherever their fears impelled. As the sleigh passed, it was thrown on one side; then it was once more whirled up again; and it went out of sight, with the rumbling sound of the runners mingling with the jingling of bells and the tramp of hoofs. At this instant a loud, distant cry from a human voice, was certainly heard. It seemed, to me, as if some one called my name; and Anneke said, she so understood it, too. The call, if call it was, came from the south, and from under the western shore. At the next moment, awful reports proceeded from the barrier above; and, passing an arm around the slender waist of my lovely companion, to support her, I began a rapid movement in the direction of that call. While attempting to reach the western shore, I had observed a high mound of broken ice, that was floating down; or rather, was pressed down on the smooth surface of the frozen river, in advance of the smaller cakes that came by in the current. It was increasing, in size, by accessions from these floating cakes, and threatened to form a new dam, at some narrow pass below, as soon as of sufficient size. It occurred to me we should be temporarily safe, could we reach that mound, for it rose so high as to be above danger from the water. Thither, then, I ran, almost carrying Anneke on my arm; our speed increased by the terrific sounds from the dam above us.