Our Boys | Page 9

opposite direction. The dust, too, filled people's eyes and noses and
mouths, while the damp raw March air easily found its way through the
best clothing, and turned boys' skins into pimply goose-flesh.
It was about as disagreeable a morning for going out as can be
imagined; and yet everybody in the little Western river town who could
get out went out and stayed out.
Men and women, boys and girls, and even little children, ran to the
river-bank: and, once there, they stayed, with no thought, it seemed, of
going back to their homes or their work.
The people of the town were wild with excitement, and everybody told
everybody else what had happened, although everybody knew all about
it already. Everybody, I mean, except Joe Lambert, and he had been so
busy ever since daylight, sawing wood in Squire Grisard's woodshed,
that he had neither seen nor heard anything at all. Joe was the poorest
person in the town. He was the only boy there who really had no home
and nobody to care for him. Three or four years before this March
morning, Joe had been left an orphan, and being utterly destitute, he
should have been sent to the poorhouse, or "bound out" to some person
as a sort of servant. But Joe Lambert had refused to go to the poorhouse
or to become a bound boy. He had declared his ability to take care of
himself, and by working hard at odd jobs, sawing wood, rolling barrels
on the wharf, picking apples or weeding onions as opportunity offered,
he had managed to support himself "after a manner," as the village

people said. That is to say, he generally got enough to eat, and some
clothes to wear. He slept in a warehouse shed, the owner having given
him leave to do so on condition that he would act as a sort of watchman
on the premises.
Joe Lambert alone of all the villagers knew nothing of what had
happened; and of course Joe Lambert did not count for anything in the
estimation of people who had houses to live in. The only reason I have
gone out of the way to make an exception of so unimportant a person is,
that I think Joe did count for something on that particular March day at
least.
When he finished the pile of wood that he had to saw, and went to the
house to get his money, he found nobody there. Going down the street
he found the town empty, and, looking down a cross street, he saw the
crowds that had gathered on the river-bank, thus learning at last that
something unusual had occurred. Of course he ran to the river to learn
what it was.
When he got there he learned that Noah Martin the fisherman who was
also the ferryman between the village and its neighbor on the other side
of the river, had been drowned during the early morning in a foolish
attempt to row his ferry skiff across the stream. The ice which had
blocked the river for two months, had begun to move on the day before,
and Martin with his wife and baby--a child about a year old--were on
the other side of the river at the time. Early on that morning there had
been a temporary gorging of the ice about a mile above the town, and,
taking advantage of the comparatively free channel, Martin had tried to
cross with his wife and child, in his boat.
The gorge had broken up almost immediately, as the river was rising
rapidly, and Martin's boat had been caught and crushed in the ice.
Martin had been drowned, but his wife, with her child in her arms, had
clung to the wreck of the skiff, and had been carried by the current to a
little low-lying island just in front of the town.
What had happened was of less importance, however, than what people
saw must happen. The poor woman and baby out there on the island,

drenched as they had been in the icy water, must soon die with cold,
and, moreover, the island was now nearly under water, while the great
stream was rising rapidly. It was evident that within an hour or two the
water would sweep over the whole surface of the island, and the great
fields of ice would of course carry the woman and child to a terrible
death.
Many wild suggestions were made for their rescue, but none that gave
the least hope of success. It was simply impossible to launch a boat.
The vast fields of ice, two or three feet in thickness, and from twenty
feet to a hundred yards in breadth, were crushing and grinding down
the river at the rate of four