Tiger also accompanied the party, for his master seldom went anywhere without him, except to school.

The boys amused themselves, as on the previous day, with shoving off large blocks of ice into the stream, and with running rapidly over floating pieces that were not large enough to bear them up.

Sometimes they narrowly escaped a ducking, so venturesome were they; and all of them got their feet pretty thoroughly soaked.
It happened, after awhile, that a cake of ice upon which the boys were all standing, got disengaged from the shore, unperceived by them, and commenced floating into the river.

They were all at work upon another ice-block, trying to push it off, and did not notice that they were going off themselves, until they were several feet from the shore.

The distance was too great to leap, and the water was so deep that none of them dared to jump off from their precarious footing.
"Well, this is a pretty joke," said one of the boys, with some appearance of alarm.