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"I think that was a very mean thing to do," said Jimmieboy.
"I'd agree with you if I had any conscience, but alas! they've deprived me of that too," sighed the voice. "But look out," it added, hastily. "Throw yourself into that snow-bank or you'll fall into the river."
Without waiting to think why, Jimmieboy obeyed the voice and threw himself headlong into a huge snow bank at his side, and glanced anxiously about him.
He was indeed, as the voice had said, on the very edge of the ice, and another yard's advance would have landed him head over heels in the rushing water.
"That would have been awful, wouldn't it?" he said to the Stove, as his little friend came up.
"Yes, it would," returned the Stove. "It would have put out the lights in your clothes, and that would have been very awful, for I find we have come away without any matches. Jump into the boat, now, and row as straight for the other side as you can."
Jimmieboy looked about him for a boat, but couldn't see one.
"There is no boat," he said.
"Yes, there is jump!" cried the Stove.
And Jimmieboy jumped, and, strange to relate, found himself in an instant seated amidships in an exquisitely light row-boat made entirely of ice.
"Row fast, now," said the Stove. "If you don't the boat will melt before we can get across."
XV. IN THE HEART OF FROSTLAND
"That's easy enough to find," returned Jimmieboy, pulling at the oars. "Coat rhymes with boat, and so do note and moat and goat and "
"Very true," assented the Stove, "but it wouldn't do to use coat because we take our coats off when we row. Note is good enough but you don't have time to write one when you are singing a sea-song. Moat isn't any good, because nobody'd know whether you meant the moat of a castle, a sun-moat, or the one in your eye. As for goats, goats don't go well in poetry. So I guess it's just as well to stop singing right here."
"How fast we go!" said Jimmieboy.
"What did you expect?" asked the Stove. "The bottom of this boat is as slippery as can be, and, of course, going up the river against the current we get over the water faster than if we were going the other way because we er because we well because we do."
"Seems to me," said Jimmieboy, "I'd better turn out some of the gas in my coat. I'm melting right through the seat here."
"So am I," returned the Stove, with an anxious glance at the icy craft. "It won't be more than a minute before I melt my end of the boat all to pieces. I'm afraid we'll have to take to our arctics after all. I brought a pair of your father's along, and it's a good thing for us that he has big feet, for you'll have to get in one and I in the other."
Just then the stern of the boat melted away, and the Stove, springing up from his seat and throwing himself into one of the arctics, with his ammunition and rubber hose, floated off. Jimmieboy had barely time to get into the other arctic when his end of the ice-boat also gave way, and a cross-current in the stream catching the arctic whirled it about and carried it and its little passenger far away from the Stove who shortly disappeared around a turn in the river, so that Jimmieboy was left entirely
alone in utter ignorance as to where he really was or what he should do next. Generally Jimmieboy was a very brave little boy, but he found his present circumstances rather trying. To be floating down a strange river in a large overshoe, with absolutely no knowledge of the way home, and a very dim notion only as to how he had managed to get where he was, was terrifying, and when he realized his position, great tears fell from Jimmieboy's eyes, freezing into little pearls of ice before they landed in the bottom of the golosh, where they piled up so rapidly that the strange craft sank further and further into the water and would certainty have sunk with their weight had not the voice Jimmieboy had encountered a little while before come to his rescue.
"Golosh, ahoy!" cried the voice. "Captain! Captain! Lean over the side and cry in the river or you'll sink your boat."
The sound of the voice was a great relief to the little sailor who at once tried to obey the order he had received but found it unnecessary since his tears immediately dried up.
"Come out here in the boat with me!" cried Jimmieboy. "I'm awful lonesome and I don't know what to do."
"Then there is only one thing you can do," said the voice from a point directly over the buckle of the arctic. "And that is to sit still and let time show you. It's a great thing, Jimmieboy, when you don't know what to do and can't find any one to tell you, to sit down and do nothing, because if you did something you'd be likely to find out afterwards that it was the wrong thing. When I was young, in the days when I was what I used to be, I once read a poem that has lingered with me ever since. It was called 'Wait and See' and this is the way it went: