Page:Adrift on an Ice-Pan (1909).djvu/93

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN

when they came within shouting distance, I heard some one cry out, “Don’t get excited. Keep on the pan where you are.” They were infinitely more excited than I. Already to me it seemed just as natural now to be saved as, half an hour before, it had seemed inevitable I should be lost, and had my rescuers only known, as I did, the sensation of a bath in that ice when you could not dry yourself afterwards, they need not have expected me to follow the example of the apostle Peter and throw myself into the water.

As the man in the bow leaped from the boat on to my ice raft and grasped both my hands in his, not a word was uttered. I could see in his face the strong emotions he was trying hard to force back, though in

[ 47 ]