The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1905-12-01


of very successful teaching
in a town on the Connecticut River, the
nearness of the midwinter recess made
it hardly profitable for him to rejoin
his fellow juniors before the second
semester began.
AS the ice firm OF Caswell & Comber,
whose big houses be had seen every
day from his schoolroom window, were
in need Of men, he did not hesitate to
make his strong muscles help out his
active brain in earning funds to pay
for an education. So he exchanged his
pedagogue's pointer for hand groove,
bar and textbook and took his place,
ut one dollar and seyenty-hye cents
day, among the toilers on the frozen
river.
Yankees, Frenchmen, Danes and
Swedes, forty-three active men all told,
made up the gang employed that year
TO fiji CasWell 81 Comber's two ten
thousand-ton houses. The first of the
season had been very mild. 1t was not
until late in January that several sue
cessive days Of zero weather, unmarried
by n single fake OF snow, formed four
teen inches Of clear beautiful ice.
Then in the early part Of February
came an ideal week for cutting. with
the temperature ranging from fifteen
TO twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit.
The firm seen had their lower house
filed to the caves, and at once set their
nA 90
about two hundred feet upstream.
Favorable conditions made their prog
ress rapid. Amsden joined the gang
after they had been three days on the
second house.
At o'clock on 4 brisk February
morning operations were in full blast.
Two yards wide, and street ching
straight out a hundred feet from the
shore, ran the canal through which the
cakes were floated to the elevator from
the black, irregular lake in the centre
Of the stream.
Carroll was stationed with his ice
hook on the upper side of this canal,
about seyenty-fye feet from the bank.
On his right twelve yard away,
labored Louis LacroiX, a Frenchman
from the Province Of Quebec; an
equal distance to the left stood ElWood
Weston a Vermont Yankee. 1t was
the duty Of these three to keep the
contents of the canal in motion. The
cakes were fourteen inches thick and
twenty-five square, and each weighed
approximately two hundred and TWEEN
ty-fve pounds. As they were hooked
and prodded from man to man, only
their tops appeared above the surface;
their full size was not revealed until
they rose, dripping, on the endless
chain of the elevator, great crystal
blocks sparkling in the sun.
Carroll received the cakes from
Weston, and pushed them on to La
CroiX The three were joking and
laughing over their work. There came
4 break in the procession, and a long
space opened in the canal. Just as
Carroll leaned out over the water to
thrust the last block along to the
Frenchman strong northerly gust
secured down behind him, sending the
loose flakes scurrying in shoals over
the smooth blue ice.
1t struck Carroll just as he bent for
ward. For a momel, he hung upon
The verge, yainly striving to keep his
balance; but the bottoms of his rubber
boots were worn SO smooth that he
could not save himself His hook fell
from his hand and he reeled over into
the swift black current
The rapid food whirled his body
downstream. His head emerged at
the lower side of the canal, and he
caught yainly at the edge So strong
was the current that he could not hope
to pull himself out unaided; but help
was at hand, If he could hold on for
few seconds. He heard the shouts
of his fellow workers and the pounding
Of their boot heels as they ran toward
him. Then his fingers slipped from
the sharp, smooth edge, and he was
dragged under the ice!
When CarrolIs hands lost their
clutch he felt instinctively that his
only chance for life was gone, ana i'm
two or three seconds he had passed
through all the stages of horror and
despair into q calm, settled resigna-
ton. He felt none of the terror of
death. 1t might mean simply drift
ing on and on, his senses growing
DINNER and DINNER until oblivion
came For perhaps q hundred feet be-
low the canal the scraper had that
morning cleared the snow from the ice,
leaving it transparent MS glass. AS
Carroll passed on, with face upturned,
lie noticed that he could see quite well
through the ice. The forenoon sun
shone down with almost dazzling light,
transmitted in coruscating radiance
through the crystal lens