Chapter XIII: The Big Minute

When Scouts Chase and Estey reached that frosty bank a confused scene met their eyes.

Before the tumble-down sheds some wildly terrified small boys were stumbling to and fro on the pale brink of the ice, floundering like river seals in their attempts to walk upon the skates which they were too distracted to remove, and shrieking at intervals:--

"He's drown-dr-rowning! Oh! he's _drowning_. Jack Barry's drowning in the river!"

"Who's drowning? What's the matter, Marcoo? Has anybody gone through the ice?" questioned Leon sharply of the one older boy upon the bank, who turned upon him over a heaving shoulder the pleasant, ruddy face, empurpled by shock, of Coombsie.

"Yes, the ice gave way out there." Marcoo pointed to a wide hole thirty yards from the bank, where the dark, imprisoned water bubbled like a whirlpool. "Little Jack Barry has fallen through. Ice rotten there! Couldn't reach him without a rope! Nix gone for it!" Coombsie flung the words from him like broken twigs. "Here he comes now!"

Bareheaded, breathless, the patrol leader of the Owls tore toward the bank, in his hand a coil of rope. Behind him ran two distracted women from a near-by house; the drowning boy's mother and his grandmother--whose one unshattered idol he was--old Ma'am Baldwin.

She looked more like a ragged cornstalk than ever, that little old woman, thought Leon--in the way that trivial reflections have of being whirled to the surface upon the tempest of a moment like this--with all her odds and ends of shawls streaming on the icy breeze that skated mockingly to meet her. With her long wisps of gray hair outstreaming too!

And as she came she raised her right arm to her breast with that pathetic gesture familiar to Starrie Chase, as though to shield her half-broken old heart from the last blow that Fate might deal to it: as if she would defend the image it held of the drowning child, and therewith little Jack himself, from the robber Death.

Starrie's brown eyes took one rapid snapshot of the old woman in her quaking anguish, and his mind passed two resolutions: that the Big Minute had come: and that there wasn't water or ice enough in the tidal river to keep him from saving Ma'am Baldwin's grandson.

"Tie this rope round me! _Quick!_ Bowline knot! I'll try an' crawl out to him!" Nixon was shrieking in his ear.

"You can't alone! The ice is too rotten. You'd break through--and we mightn't be able to pull you out that way. Must make a chain! I'll go first. Crawl after me, Nix, and hang on tight to my feet!"

Corporal Chase was already lying flat on his stomach, working himself out over the infirm ice where, here and there, within the white map of lines and circles traced by the skates of the small boys, were small holes through which the captive water heaved like Ma'am Baldwin's breast, under a thin, glassy fretwork.

After him crawled Nixon, grasping his ankles in a strong grip. And, performing a like service for the patrol leader, came Coombsie, and after Coombsie Colin; the four forming a human chain, trusting their lives to the unstable, saline ice, and to the grip of each other.

"Hold on tight, Nix! I see his head. We'll land him--yet!" Leon flung the last challenge between his set teeth at the white, porous ice and the little dark wells of bubbling water.

Worming his body in and out between those fretting holes, he reached the glassy skirts of the larger fissure which imprisoned little Jack. There the nine-year-old victim's hands clutched frantically at the jagged edges of the encircling ice, while his screams for help grew weaker. To Jack himself they seemed not to rise above the cold, pale ring that hemmed him in.

"_Hold--tight!_" The clenched word was passed along the chain as Leon at its head, hearing the tidal current beneath him sobbing, straining to be free, flung his hands out and grasped the victim's collar and shoulder, trying to lift him out of the hole.

But with a groan the brittle ice surrounding it gave way: the foremost rescuer's body was plunged too into the freezing, brackish water.

"We'll both go now--Jack an' I--unless Nix hangs on to me like a bulldog!" was the thought that stabbed him as an ice-spear while the dark tidal current, shot with glints of light like cruel eyes, engulfed his shoulders.

But Nixon held on to his ankles, like grim death fighting grim Death himself. Not a link in that human chain parted, though the ice cracked ominously beneath it!

And Leon, half submerged, battling for breath, clung steadfastly to Jack, as if indeed there was not water enough in the seven miles of tidal river to sunder them.

Presently, while his comrades backed cautiously, dragging upon the lower part of his body, his head and arms reappeared, the latter clasping Ma'am Baldwin's grandson.

A sob, half hysterical, burst from the gathering spectators on the bank.

"If--if the Lord hadn't been with him, he couldn't have hung on to him that time!" muttered Captain Andy, the old life-saver, who had limped to the scene.

And, indeed, it did seem as if the Lord was with Leon Chase and made his strength in this desperate minute--like that of one of the famous knights of the Round Table--as the strength of ten because his heart was pure!--Purified of all but the desire to help and save!

"Starrie's got him! Starrie's holding on to him!" came in an exultant cry from a group of boys rigid upon the river-brink; in their midst gleamed the face, pale and fixed as the ice itself, of Godey Peck; and from Godey's eyes streamed the first ray of ardent hero-worship those rather dull eyes had ever known--leveled at the Tin Scouts.

"Keep cool, boys! Take it easy an' you'll land him now!" shouted Captain Andy.

Afraid, for their sakes, to burden farther the ice with his massive body, he, too, stretched himself, breast downward, on the more solid crust near the bank, and seizing Colin's ankles directly they came within reach added another link to that human chain by means of which Jack's half-conscious body was finally drawn ashore and placed in his mother's arms.

"You saved him, Leon. I'll thank you as well--as well as I can--Leon!" quavered the grandmother's broken voice.

"Aw! that's all right," came in an embarrassed shiver from between the chattering teeth of the foremost rescuer, from whom the water ran in rivulets that would freeze in another minute.

"I'll forward the names of you four boys to National Headquarters, to receive the scout medal for life-saving!" proudly cried Scoutmaster Estey, who at this minute appeared upon the river-bank, while he plucked Jack's numbed body from his mother's shaking arms and set off at a run with it toward the nearest house.

Leon was hustled in the same direction by an admiring crowd.

But whence came that shrill challenge waking the echoes of the Christmas Eve? Did Godey's lips utter the cry: "What's the matter with the Boy Scouts? They're all right!"

And a score of throats gave back the answer:--

"Three cheers for the Boy Scouts of America! Three cheers--an' a tiger--for the Owl Patrol."

"Say, Mister!" Half an hour later, as Scoutmaster Estey issued from the cottage where, with the help of Kenjo Red and another scout, he had been turning his first-aid knowledge to account in the resuscitation of little Jack, he heard himself thus addressed and felt a hand pluck at his sleeve. Looking down, in the twilight, he saw Godey Peck.

"Say! it hasn't made 'softies' of 'em, this scout business," declared Godey oracularly. "I want to be a scout too. Us boys all want to come in!" He glanced behind him at his gang who had constituted him their spokesman.

"Really? Do you _all_ want to enlist in the Boy Scouts of America?"

"Sure! We want to come in now at the rate of sixty miles an hour, you bet!" Godey chuckled.

"Oh! well, if you're in such a hurry as that, come round to my house to-night; we're going to have a Christmas celebration there." And the tall scoutmaster walked off, laughing.

Thus on Christmas Eve did Godey drop off the fence on the side of the boy scouts, whose code of chivalry is only an elaboration of the first Christmas message: "Peace on earth, good will to men!"