Part 8 (1/2)

There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stamp factory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of ice cutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. The men had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed it into cakes, and poled it to sh.o.r.e and so to the sleds and the manager's icehouse.

It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued, it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough to bear again over that spot.

Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for the big icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights of Powerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swept on up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as there was, and the air was keen and nippy.

The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her furs and Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the m.u.f.fler Momsey had knitted with her own hands, did not mind the cold.

The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestle just beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds for pa.s.sengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago, and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work.

The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in the Amity street cottage had never been separated for more than a day since she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with Papa Sherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to get along without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hard ch.o.r.es?

Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. ”Dear me, Nan! Have you lost your tongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something.”

”Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury,” proposed Nan instantly.

The lights of the long coaches were just moving out of the station at the Landing. The two girls came about in a graceful curve and struck out for home at a pace that even the train could not equal. The rails followed the sh.o.r.e of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at the foot of the bluffs. They could see the lights s.h.i.+ning through the car windows all the way.

The fireman threw open the door of his firebox to feed the furnace and a great glare of light, and a shower of sparks, spouted from the smokestack. The rumble of the wheels from across the ice seemed louder than usual.

”Come on, Bess!” gasped Nan, quite excited. ”We can do better than this!

Why, that old train will beat us!”

For they were falling behind. The train hooted its defiance as it swept down toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the sh.o.r.e, where the shadow of the high bluff lay heavily upon the ice.

They heard the boys' voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan could not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and were playing old-fas.h.i.+oned hockey, ”s.h.i.+nny-on-your-own-side” as it was locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of the s.h.i.+nny-stick against the wooden block, and the ”z-z-z-zip!” of the missile as it scaled over the ice.

”Those boys will get into the ice-hole if they don't look out,” Nan had just said to her chum, when suddenly a wild yell arose from the hockey players.

The train was slowing down at the signal tower, and finally stopped there. A freight had got in on the main track which had to be cleared before the pa.s.senger train could go into Tillbury station. The coaches stood right along the edge of the frozen pond.

But it was nothing in connection with the evening train that caused such a commotion among the skaters near the stamp factory. There was a crash of breaking ice and a scrambling of skaters away from the spot. The boys' yells communicated panic to other people ash.o.r.e.

”He's in! He's in!” Nan and Bess heard the boys yelling. Then a man's voice took up the cry: ”He'll be drowned! Help! Help!”

”That's old Peter Newkirk,” gasped Nan, squeezing Bess' gloved hands tightly. ”He's night watchman at the stamp works, and he has only one arm. He can't help that boy.”

The youngsters who had been playing hockey so recklessly near the thin ice, were not as old as Nan and Bess, and the accident had thrown them into utter confusion. Some skated for the sh.o.r.e, screaming for ropes and fence-rails; others only tried to get away from the danger spot themselves. None did the first thing to help their comrade who had broken through the ice.

”Where are you going, Nan?” gasped Bess, pulling back. ”You'll have us both in the water, too.”

”We can save him! Quick!” returned her chum eagerly.

She let go of Bess and unwound the long m.u.f.fler from about her own neck.

”If we could only see him!” the girl said, over and over.

And then a brilliant idea struck Nan Sherwood, and she turned to shout to old Peter Newkirk on the sh.o.r.e. ”Peter! Peter! Turn on the electric light sign! Turn it on so we can see where he's gone in!”

The watchman had all his wits about him. There was a huge electric sign on the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare of it could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the surroundings of the mill.