All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting on a fragment in a wide way of open water opposite Skerrett's Point, a mile distant. Perry's heart stopped beating. He uttered a little gasping cry. He sprang ashore, not at all like a Doge quitting a Bucentaur. He tore back to the Foundry, dashing through the puddles, and, never stopping to pick up his cap, burst in upon Wade and Bill Tarbos in the office. The boy was splashed from head to foot with red mud. His light hair, blown wildly about, made his ashy face seem paler. He stood panting. His dumb terror brought back to Wade's mind all the bad omens of the morning. "Speak!" said he, seizing Perry fiercely by the shoulder. The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an instant, while the lad stammered faintly,-- "There's somebody carried off in the ice by Skerrett's Point. It looks like a woman. And there's nobody to help." CHAPTER XII. IN THE ICE. "Help! help!" shouted the four triphammers, bursting in like a magnified echo of the boy's last word. "Help! help!" all the humming wheels and drums repeated more plaintively. Wade made for the river. This was the moment all his manhood had been training and saving for. For this he had kept sound and brave from his youth up. As he ran, he felt that the only chance of instant help was in that queer little bowl-shaped skiff of the "Ambuster." He had never been conscious that he had observed it; but the image had lain latent in his mind, biding its time. It might be ten, twenty precious moments before another boat could be found. This one was on the spot to do its duty at once. "Somebody carried off,--perhaps a woman," Wade thought. "Not--No, she would not neglect my warning! Whoever it is, we must save her from this dreadful death!" He sprang on board the little steamboat. She was swaying uneasily at her moorings, as the ice crowded along and hammered against her stem. Wade stared from her deck down the river, with all his life at his eyes. More than a mile away, below the hemlock-crested point, was the dark object Perry had seen, still stirring along the edges of the floating ice. A broad avenue of leaden-green water wrinkled by the cold wind separated the field where this figure was moving from the shore. Dark object and its footing of gray ice were drifting deliberately farther and farther away. For one instant Wade thought that the terrible dread in his heart would paralyze him. But in that one moment, while his blood stopped flowing and his nerves failed, Bill Tarbos overtook him and was there by his side. "I brought your cap," says Bill, "and our two coats." Wade put on his cap mechanically. This little action calmed him. "Bill," said he, "I'm afraid it is a woman,--a dear friend of mine,--a very dear friend." Bill, a lover, understood the tone. "We'll take care of her between us," he said. The two turned at once to the little tub of a boat.