A STRANGE ADVENTURE ON THE ICE 37 



could not retard his pace. Down into the cold stream he 

 went. His comrades saw him disappear with a feeling of 

 horror. 



Under the ice was an open space, a sort of air-chamber, 

 and a swift current. He was numbed by the chill, but he 

 felt himself borne along under the ice as by invisible arms. 



" My senses," he says, " must, for aught I know, have 

 left me for a while." 



He was thus borne along for some thirty or forty 

 yards, when the sky again shone above him, and he found 

 himself lifted up, as by arms of the air. He had come to 

 another air-hole. He seized the ice and crawled up. He 

 rose, as it were, from an icy tomb. 



His companions saw him thus rising, and shouted. They 

 tore his clothes from him, and each gave him some part of 

 his own clothing. 



Thus he flew back again, as it were, more swiftly than 

 when he came, and a curious object indeed he presented 

 at his own doors, filling the people with astonishment. 



His wedding journey down the Ohio to Louisville was 

 on a kind of raft, or flatboat, called an ark. The woods 

 were full of spring birds, and he began to interest his bride 

 in his original plans of painting. Robins flying north must 

 have haunted the early woods with their songs. River 

 birds were everywhere. His bride entered into his dreams 

 of becoming a great naturalist. 



The Knitter of Nantes was not here to encourage him, 



