WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



457 



to the edge of the creek, which lay between him and the 

 sinking child, hoping to reach the child across the un- 

 frozen middle of the creek. But the thin ice broke, let- 

 ting the man into the water only ten feet away from the 

 child. He swam across and caught the child, holding it 

 above water as best he could, waiting for some one else to 

 help them both. 



The other men passed around the head of the treacher- 

 ous creek and got a small boat, which they pushed off into 

 the water. First they pulled into the boat the exhausted 

 woman and one child, then they reached a long pole to 

 Stephenson with the other child, and by a hard struggle 



Photo, Mrs. E. K. Kllms 



Ice Boating on the Gulf. 



pulled them through the cakes of broken ice to the boat. 

 The little craft was leaking dangerously ; and when 

 Stephenson with his protege were taken in, they had 

 hardly time to breathe before the boat swamped and the 

 whole crowd were dumped into the water again. 



The children were too exhausted to try again for their 

 lives and they sank to the bottom. The tangle of strug- 

 gling men and the half-drowned woman was an awful 

 sight to the few that watched them from the meadow 

 bank seventy feet away. Some rushed up to one of the 

 houses to get a rope, none of which could be found, 



