The sight of the poles seemed
suddenly to suggest it, and in a moment every spare pole had been
seized, and, headed by our heavy friend, eight or ten men plunged in,
and, smashing the ice before them, waded out to meet the school-master.
On the bank we were dead silent; in the water they neither stopped nor
spoke till it was breast high round their leader.
I have often thought, and have always felt quite sure, that if the heavy
man had gone on till the little grey waves and the bits of ice closed
over him, not a soul of those who followed him would--nay, _could_--have
turned back. Heroism, like cowardice, is contagious, and I do not think
there was one of us by that time who would have feared to dare or
grudged to die.
As it was, the heavy man stood still and shouted for the rope. It had
come, and perhaps it was not the smallest effect of the day's teaching,
that those on the bank paid it out at once to those in the water till it
reached the leader, without waiting to ask why he wanted it. The grace
of obedience is slow to be learnt by disputatious northmen, but we had
had some hard teaching that afternoon.
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