"That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing down and worshiping another human being,—crazy if you don't get her, and crazed by her if you do,—I'll have none of it."
"That fellow has proposed for Mademoiselle Saucier and been rejected. I'm glad I'm a churchman, and not yoked up to draw a family, like these fools, and like he wants to be. This bowing down and worshiping another human being,—crazy if you don't get her, and crazed by her if you do,—I'll have none of it."
Dr. Dunlap raised his arms and shouted to the company in the bar-room. What hesaid no one could hear. Hissing and roaring filled the world, submerging the crackling of the fire, the banjo tunes, and human voices. Men looked at each other, stupefied, holding their pipes from their mouths. Then a wave struck the solid old tavern, hissed across its gallery, and sprawled through the hall upon the bar-room floor. Not a person in the house could understand what had happened to Kaskaskia peninsula; but Jean Lozier stood on the bluff and saw it.
Jean was watching the lights of Kaskaskia while his sick grandfather slept. The moon was nearly full, but on such a night one forgot there was a moon. The bushes dripped on Jean, and the valley below him was a blur pierced by those rows of lights. A great darkness was coming out of the northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept across the world and filled it. The boyfound himself sitting on the ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing was gone,—the incredible Thing, in which no one believes except him who has seen it, and which no name can name; that awful spirit of Deluge, which lives in the traditions of every race. Jean had never heard of waterspout or cloudburst or any modern name given to the Force whenever its leash is slipped for a few minutes. He felt himself as trivial a thing in chaos as the ant which clung on his hand and bit him because it was drowning.
The blind downpour being gone, though rain still fell and the wind whistled in his ears, Jean climbed across bent or broken saplings nearer the bluff's edge to look at Kaskaskia. The rows of lights were partially blotted; and lightning, by its swiftunrollings, showed him a town standing in a lake. The Mississippi and the Okaw had become one water, spreading as far as the eye could see. Now bells began to clamor from that valley of foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling appeal from the convent supplemented it.
There was no need of the bells to rouse Kaskaskia; they served rather as sounding buoys in a suddenly created waterway. Peggy Morrison had come to stay all night with Angélique Saucier. The two girls were shut in their bedroom, and Angélique's black maid was taking the pins from Peggy's hair, when the stone house received its shock, and shuddered like a ship. Screams were heard from the cabins. Angélique threw the sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the lightning showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.
Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery. Angélique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts. The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling creatures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads, and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.
The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver, and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up the attic stairs. Angélique's harp went up between two stout fellows, tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps. Tante-gra'mère's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from their beds by thenurse, and carried to beds made for them in the attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of such novel times.
The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and the disused cradle and still-crib was now piled the salvage of a wealthy household. Two dormer windows pierced the roof fronting the street, and there was also one in the west gable, extending like a hallway toward the treetops, but none in the roof at the back.
The timbers of the house creaked, and at every blow of the water the inmates could hear it splashing to the chimneys on one side, and running down on the other.
"Now," said Captain Saucier desperately, "tante-gra'mère must be roused and carried up."
"Yes, the feather beds are all piled together for her, with fresh linen sheets andall her cushions; but," gasped madame his wife, "she has never before been waked in the night. Is it not better to send Angélique to bring her by degrees into a frame of mind for being removed?"
"There is no time. I have left her till the last minute, hoping she might wake."
They made a procession into her chamber, Angélique and Peggy carrying candles, the grand-nephew and grand-niece ready for a conflict. Waters booming against the house, and already making river coves of familiar rooms, were scarcely more to be dreaded than the obstinate will of a creature as small as a child.
Angélique lifted a ruffle of tante-gra'mère's nightcap and whispered in her ear. She stirred, and struck out with one hand, encountering the candle flame. That brought her upright, staring with indignant black eyes at the conclave.
"Dear tante-gra'mère, we are in danger. There is a great overflow of the rivers."
The autocrat felt for her whip in itsaccustomed place, and armed herself with it.
"Pardon us for disturbing you, tante-gra'mère," said her grand-nephew, "but I am obliged to carry you into the attic."
"Is the sun up?" cried the little voice.
"The water is, madame," answered Peggy.
"If you wait for the sun, tante-gra'mère," urged her grand-nephew's wife, "you will drown here."
"Do you tell me I will drown in my own bed? I will not drown. Where is Wachique?"
"She is carrying your chairs into the attic, tante-gra'mère."
"My chairs gone to the attic in my lifetime? And who has claimed my dower chest and my linen?"
"All your things are safely removed except this bedstead, madame," declared Angélique's mother. "They were set down more carefully than my china."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Only a few hours, tante-gra'mère. It is early in the night."
Her withered face was quite wrathful.
"The water is all over the floor, madame. We are standing to our ankles. In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees. Look at it. Do you hear the roaring and the wash outside? Kaskaskia is under water, and the people have to climb to the roofs."
The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy. She now craned over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.
"Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here to break my rest?" she inquired.
Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again, holding the whip bolt upright.
"If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me."
"There is not time to move it."
"And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your cushions."
"My bed goes with me," repeated tante-gra'mère.
"There will soon be water enough to carry it," remarked Peggy, "if it will float."
Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'mère's closed shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it. The majesty of the terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long. Again came the crash of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.
The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as the water struck. Angélique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and splashes, and Captain Saucierwaded after them. So the last vestige of human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.
The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the attic. So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea. All the windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest crevices. There were two rooms in the attic. In the first one the slaves huddled among piles of furniture. The west room held the children's pallets and tante-gra'mère's lowly substitute for her leviathan bed. She sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully. Angélique at once had a pair of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra'mère as promptly had them rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation. In chaotic anger and terror she snapped her whip at intervals.
"What is it, dear tante-gra'mère?" Angélique would inquire.
"Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead."
"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Wachique would drown. The water is already half way up the attic stairs."
"Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?"
"Dear, there are six feather beds under you."
"How long is this to last?"
"Not long, I hope."
Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night. To her the peninsula seemed sinking. She could not see anything distinctly. Foam specked the panes. The bells kept up their alarm. Father Olivier was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer, and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness which was the rule of their lives. Peggy tried to see even the roof of her home. She was a grateful daughter;but her most anxious thoughts were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be of her.
When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface. A little moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices. Angélique was bathing her mother's face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted comfortably, when nothing else could be done. Something bumped against the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a voice hailed them.
"That is Colonel Menard!" cried Angélique.
Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of it. Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves. A lantern was fastened in the prow.
"How do you make a landing at this port?"
"The saints know, colonel. But we will land you. How dared you venture out in the trail of such a storm?"
"I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier. Besides, I am a good swimmer. Are you all safe?"
"Safe, thank Heaven," called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband. "But here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?"
"On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could. But we shall be stove in here. Monsieur the captain, can you let the family down the roof to me?"
Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done quickly. By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into their clothing, and Wachiquebrought a wrap of fur and wool for tante-gra'mère. Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a rope around their master's waist, by which they could hold and guide him in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.
"How many can you carry?" he inquired.
"Six at a time," answered Colonel Menard. "To try to do more would hardly be safe, in this rough water."
"Were the boats at the wharf swept away?"
"It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was. But some of the large craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff. By daylight we shall get some out. And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can muster for us."
Angélique came to the dormer window and touched her father's shoulder.
"Are you all ready?" he asked.
"Tante-gra'mère will not go into the boat."
"But she must. There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard cannot much longer hang by the eaves."
"Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the danger below, she may allow it."
"She must go into the boat directly," said Captain Saucier; and the negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.
Angélique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters. The wind sung in her ears. She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try her voice against them. His man had an oar thrust into the broken window below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.
"Monsieur the colonel!" called Angélique; and she saw the swift removal of his hat.
"Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?"
"Yes, monsieur. Even my father wasunable to do anything for the family until you came. But it seems when we find one relief we get another anxiety with it."
"What other anxiety have you now?"
"I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out."
"My bel-o-ved, would you care?" said Pierre Menard, speaking English, which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first syllable the name he gave her.
"Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me," replied Angélique.
"Now that is worth coming here for. De northwest wind, I do not feel it since you say that."
"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this water."
Tante-gra'mère screamed, and Angélique disappeared from the window-sill. It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman.The keen small shriek was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain Saucier was made limp by it.
"What shall I do?" he asked his family.
"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."
"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Angélique. "The wind may sink. The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."
"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.
"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the window into the next boat that comes along."
"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the boat, and stay with her myself."
"Angélique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.
"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.
Captain Saucier went again to the window, his wife and daughter and Peggy with him.
"I could not leave her," said Angélique to Peggy. They stood behind the father and mother, who told their trouble across the sill.
"That spoiled old woman needs a good shaking," declared Peggy.
"Poor little tante-gra'mère. It is a dreadful thing, Peggy, to be a child when you are too old for discipline."
"Give my compliments to madame, and coax her," urged Colonel Menard. "Tell her, if she will let herself be lowered to me, I will pledge my life for her safety."
The two children stood huddled together, waiting, large-eyed and silent, while their elders kneeled around the immovable invalid. Peggy laughed at the expectant attitudes of the pleaders.
"Tante-gra'mère has now quite made up her mind to go," Madame Saucier announced over and over to her family and to Peggy, and to the slaves at the partition door, all of whom were waiting for the rescue barred from them by one obstinate little mummy.
But these hopeful assertions were wasted. Tante-gra'mère had made up her mind to stay. She held to her whip, and refused to be touched. Her fixed decree was announced to Colonel Menard. He asked for the women and children of the family in haste. He and his man were wasting time and strength holding the boat against the waves. It was in danger of being swamped.
Angélique stood deferentially before her father and asked his permission to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two young children only. Peggy said she would not leave Angélique.
"Monsieur the colonel," spoke Angélique again into the windy darkness, "we are not worth half the trouble you are taking for us. I wonder you do not leave such ridiculous people to drown or get out as we can. But my tante-gra'mère is so old; please forgive her. My mother and the children are quite ready. I wish poor Mademoiselle Zhone were with you, too."
"I will fetch Mademoiselle Zhone out of her house before madame and the children get in," said Pierre Menard promptly. "As for the delay, it is nothing, mademoiselle; we must get you all to land as we can."
"Monsieur, will it not be dangerous? I thought of her because she is so sick. But there is foam everywhere; and the trees are in your way."
"We can find a track," answered the colonel. "Push off, boy."
The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.
Angélique went to the dormer window in the gable. As she threw the sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra'mère sent from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone. Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again. He was a crestfallen man. He had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest member of his household.
Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the roof.
"It is rising higher," said Peggy.
Angélique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone. Perhaps, when the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in the boat now.
The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by. They called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.
The children sat down, and leaned theirheads against their mother's knee. The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of anxiety and broken domestic habits. Captain Saucier watched for the return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones's voice called.
The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level with the other windows. Captain Saucier leaned far out. The wind had extinguished the boat's lantern. The rowers were trying to hold the boat broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became breakers and threatened to capsize it. All Kaskaskia men were acquainted with water. Pierre Menard had made many a river journey. But the Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.
"Can you take her in?" shouted Rice. "My sister thinks she cannot be got ashore alive."
"Can you lift her to me?"
"When the next wave comes," said Rice.
He steadied himself and lifted Maria. As the swell again tossed the boat upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could. Captain Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic. He laid her down on the children's bed, leaving her to Angélique, while he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat. Rice crept over the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister. By lantern light he was a strong living figure. His austerely white face was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation. His hat had blown away. The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his full head.
"This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles," he observed.
"Oh, Monsieur Zhone," lamented Madame Saucier, "how can you laugh? We are all ruined."
"No, madame. There is no such word as 'ruin' in the Territory."
"And I must take my two little children, and leave Angélique here in the midst of this water."
Rice had directly knelt down by his sister and put his hand on her forehead. Maria was quite still, and evidently gathering her little strength together.
"But why do you remain?" said Rice to Angélique. She was at Maria's opposite side, and she merely indicated the presence behind the screens; but Peggy explained aloud,—
"She can't go because tante-gra'mère won't be moved."
"Put that limb of a Morrison girl out of the house," came an unexpected mandate from amongst the screens.
"I would gladly put her out," said Captain Saucier anxiously. "Peggy, my child, now that Mademoiselle Zhone is with Angélique, be persuaded to go with madame and the children."
Peggy shook her head, laughing. A keen new delight in delay and danger made her sparkle.
"Go yourself, Captain Saucier. One gentleman is enough to take care of us."
"I think you ought to go, Captain Saucier," said Rice. "You will be needed. The boat may be swamped by some of those large waves. I am ashamed of leaving my stepmother behind; but she would not leave my father, and Maria clung to me. We dared not fill the boat too full."
Angélique ran and kissed the children before her father put them into the boat, and offered her cheeks to her mother. Madame Saucier was a fat woman. She clung appalled to her husband, as he let her over the slippery roof. Two slave men braced themselves and held the ropes which steadied him, the whites of their eyes showing. Their mistress was landed with a plunge, but steadied on her seat by Colonel Menard.
"Oh," she cried out, "I have left the house without saying adieu to tante-gra'mère. My mind is distracted. She will as long as she lives remember this discourtesy."
"It could be easily remedied, madame,"suggested Colonel Menard, panting as he braced his oar, "if she would step into the boat herself, as we all wish her to do."
"Oh, monsieur the colonel, you are the best of men. If you had only had the training of her instead of my poor gentle Francis, she might not be so hard to manage now."
"We must not flatter ourselves, madame. But Mademoiselle Angélique must not remain here much longer for anybody's whim."
"Do you think the water is rising?"
"It is certainly rising."
Madame Saucier uttered a shriek as a great swell rolled the boat. The searching wind penetrated all her garments and blew back loose ends of her hair. There was now a partially clear sky, and the moon sent forth a little lustre as a hint of what she might do when she had entirely freed herself from clouds.
The children were lowered, and after them their black nurse.
"There is room for at least one more!" called Pierre Menard.
Captain Saucier stood irresolute.
"Can you not trust me with these fragments of our families?" said Rice.
"Certainly, Monsieur Reece, certainly. It is not that. But you see the water is still rising."
"I was testing the rise of the water when Colonel Menard reached us. The wind makes it seem higher than it really is. You can go and return, captain, while you are hesitating."
"I am torn in two," declared the Indian fighter. "It makes a child of me to leave Angélique behind."
"Francis Saucier," came in shrill French from the screens, "get into that boat, and leave my godchild alone."
The captain laughed. He also kissed the cheeks of tante-gra'mère's godchild and let himself slide down the roof, and the boat was off directly.
The slaves, before returning to their own room, again fastened the sashes of the dormer window. The clamor of bells whichseemed to pour through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized her she tightened it.
"She wants air," he said hastily, and Angélique again spread wide the window in the gable, when the thin cry of her tante-gra'mère forbade it.
"But, dear tante-gra'mère, Mademoiselle Zhone must have air."
"And must she selfishly give me rheumatism in order to give herself air?"
"But, dear tante-gra'mère"—
"Shut that window."
"I dare not, indeed."
Rice seized two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angélique, with an amusedface, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the great soft lair built up of so many beds.
"You and I are nice people, madame," said Peggy through her teeth. "We don't care who suffers, if we are happy. We ought to have been twins; the same little beast lives in us both."
Tante-gra'mère's eyes snapped.
"You are a limb," she responded in shrill French.
"Yes; we know each other," said Peggy.
"When you are old, there will come a little wretch to revile you."
"I don't revile you, madame. I dote on you."
"Your mother should box your ears, mademoiselle."
"It would do me no good, madame."
"I should like to try it," said tante-gra'mère, without humor.
Angélique did not hear this little quarrel. She was helping Rice with his sister. Hispockets were full of Maria's medicines. He set the bottles out, and Angélique arranged them ready for use. They gave her a spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again, grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Angélique's sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented that look.
Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed. The northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased each other up the roof at her.
"The water is still rising," remarked Peggy.
"Look, Peggy," begged Angélique, "and see if Colonel Menard and my father are coming back with the boat."
"It is too soon," said Rice.
"Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back," suggested Peggy. "It was a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College."
"But the storm is over now. The water is not washing over the house."
"The moon shows plenty of whitecaps. It is rough."
"As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous," said Rice. "But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying the sacrament. He is used to the rivers."
"Hear a Protestant catering to a papist," observed Peggy. "But it is lost on Angélique. She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard. She accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the rescue."
"Must I congratulate him?" Rice inquired of Angélique. "He certainly deserves his good luck."
"Peggy has no right to announce it so!" exclaimed Angélique, feeling invaded and despoiled of family privacy. "It is not yet called an engagement."
Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood. She admired him with keen appreciation. He took his disappointment as he would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a muscle, and complimented the giver.
Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells. Peggy leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow which she knew to be the bluffs. The sound bounded over the water. From this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always visible. She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.
The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching thenightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed. When a particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but others as anxious took their places.
"Boats will be putting out from the bluffs plentifully, soon," said Rice. "Before to-morrow sunset all Kaskaskia and its goods and chattels will be moved to the uplands."
"I wonder what became of the poor cows," mused Angélique. "They were turned out to the common pasture before the storm."
"Some of them were carried down by the rivers, and some swam out to the uplands. It is a strange predicament for the capital of a great Territory. But these rich lowlands were made by water, and if they can survive overflow they must be profited by it."
"What effect will this have on the election?" inquired Peggy, and Rice laughed.
"You can't put us back on our ordinary level, Miss Peggy. We are lifted above elections for the present."
"Here is a boat!" she exclaimed, and the slaves at the other window hailed Father Olivier as he tried to steady himself at the angle formed by the roofs.
Angélique looked out, but Rice sat still beside his sister.
"Are you all quite safe?" shouted the priest.
"Quite, father. The slaves were brought in, and we are all in the attic."
"Keep up your courage and your prayers. As soon as this strong wind dies away they will put out from shore for you."
"Colonel Menard has already been here and taken part of the family."
"Has he?"
"Yes, father; though tante-gra'mère is afraid to venture yet, so we remain with her."
They could see the priest, indistinctly, sitting in a small skiff, which he tried to keep off the roof with a rough paddle.
"Where did you find a boat, father?"
"I think it is one the negroes had on themarsh by the levee. It lodged in my gallery, and by the help of the saints I am trying to voyage from house to house, as far as I can, and carry a little encouragement. I have the parish records here with me; and if this vessel capsizes, their loss would be worse for this parish than the loss of me."
"But, father, you are not trying to reach the land in that frail canoe?"
"Not yet, my daughter; not until some of the people are taken out. I did intend to venture for help, but the ringing of the bells has been of service to us. The sexton will stay in the belfry all night. I was able to get him there by means of this boat."
"Come up here until the wind dies down, Monsieur Olivier," urged Peggy. "That little tub is not strong enough to carry you. I have seen it. The slaves made it, with scarcely any tools, of some boards from the old Jesuit College."
"The little tub has done good service to-night, mademoiselle; and I must get as far as the tavern, at least, to carry news of theirfamilies to men there. Antoine Lamarche's child is dead, and his family are on the roof. I was able to minister to its parting soul; and I set the others, for safety, astride the roof-pole, promising them heavy penance if they moved before help came. He ought now to take this boat and go to them, if I can put him in heart to do it."
"A Protestant hardly caters to a papist when he puts some faith in the courage of a man like Father Olivier," said Rice to Peggy.
"Did I hint that you would cater to any one?" she responded, with a lift of her slender chin. The wind had blown out a long tress of Peggy's hair, which trailed to the floor. Rice seldom looked at her; but he noticed this sweep of living redness with something like approval; in shadow it shone softened to bronze.
"I think my father and Colonel Menard are coming back," said Angélique. "I see a light moving out from the bluffs."
"Oh, no; they are only picking their way among trees to a landing."
"They have gone with the current and the wind," said Rice. "It will take a longer time to make their way back against the current and the wind."
"Let us begin to bind and gag madame now, anyhow," Peggy suggested recklessly. "It's what the colonel will do, if he is forced to it. She will never of her own will go into the boat."
"Poor tante-gra'mère. I should have asked Father Olivier to urge her. But this is such a time of confusion one thinks of nothing."
Angélique bent to watch Maria's stupor. Rice had put the skeleton hand under a coverlet which was drawn to the sick girl's chin. He sat beside her on one of the brocaded drawing-room chairs, his head resting against the high back and his crossed feet stretched toward the window, in an attitude of his own which expressed quiescent power. Peggy went directly behind the screens, determined to pounce upon the woman who prolonged their stay in a floodedhouse, and deal with her as there would not be opportunity to do later. Tante-gra'mère was asleep.
Angélique sat down with Peggy on the floor, a little way from the pile of feather beds. They were very weary. The tonic of excitement, and even of Rice Jones's presence, failed in their effect on Peggy. It was past midnight. The girls heard cocks crowing along the bluffs. Angélique took the red head upon her shoulder, saying,—
"It would be better if we slept until they call, since there is nothing else to do."
"You might coquette over Maria Jones. I won't tell."
"What a thorn you are, Peggy! If I did not know the rose that goes with it"—Angélique did not state her alternative.
"A red rose," scoffed Peggy; and she felt herself drowsing in the mother arms.
Rice was keenly awake, and when the girls went into the privacy of the screens he sat looking out of the window at the oblong of darkly blue night sky which it shapedfor him. His temples throbbed. Though the strange conditions around him were not able to vary his usual habits of thought, something exhilarated him; and he wondered at that, when Peggy had told him Angélique's decision against him. He felt at peace with the world, and for the first time even with Dr. Dunlap.
"We are here such a little time," thought Rice, "and are all such poor wretches. What does it matter, the damage we do one another in our groping about? God forgive me! I would have killed that man, and maybe added another pang to the suffering of this dying girl."
Maria stirred. The snoring of the sleeping negroes penetrated the dividing wall. He thought he heard a rasping on the shingles outside which could not be accounted for by wind or water, and rose to his feet, that instant facing Dr. Dunlap in the window.
Dr. Dunlap had one leg across the low sill. The two men stood breathless. Mariasaw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name. At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped back through the window to the boat he had taken from the priest.
The screams of women and the terrified outcry of slaves filled the attic. Rice threw his arms above his head, and sunk downward. In the midst of the smoke Peggy knelt by him, and lifted his head and shoulders. The night wind blew upon them, and she could discern his dilated eyes and piteous amazement.
"Dr. Dunlap has shot me," he said to her. "I don't know why he did it." And his face fell against her bosom as he died.
THE FLOOD.
The moonlight shone in through both windows and the lantern glimmered. The choking smell of gunpowder spread from room to room. Two of the slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for strongdomestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the loneliness of evil.
A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse to see Angélique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to approach,—these were the conditions which put him in the way of his crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Angélique was robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones. The aged woman had gone into her shell of sleep, and the muffled shot, the confusion and wailing, did not wake her. Wachique and another slave lifted the body and laid it on the quickly spread couch of pillows.
Nobody thought of Maria. She lay quite still, and made no sound in that flurry of terror.
"He is badly hurt," said Angélique. "Lizette, bring linen, the first your hand touches; and you, Achille, open his vest and find the wound quickly."
"But it's no use, ma'amselle," whispered Wachique, lifting her eyes.
"Do not be afraid, poor Achille. I will show you how myself. We cannot wait for any one to help us. What would my father and Colonel Menard say, if they found Monsieur Reece Zhone killed in our house?"
In her panic Angélique tore the vest wide, and found the great stain over the place where the heart should be. She was kneeling, and she turned back to Peggy, who stood behind her.
Death is great or it is a piteous change, like the slaughter of brutes, according as we bear ourselves in its presence. How mighty an experience it is to wait where world overlaps the edge of world, and feel the vastness of eternity around us! A moment ago—or was it many ages?—he spoke. Now he is gone, leaving a strange visible image lying there to awe us. The dead take sudden majesty. They become as gods. We think they hear us when we speak of them, and their good becomes sacred. A dead facehas all human faults wiped from it; and that Shape, that Presence, whose passiveness seems infinite, how it fills the house, the town, the whole world, while it stays!
The hardest problem we have to face here is the waste of our best things,—of hopes, of patience, of love, of days, of agonizing labor, of lives which promise most. Rice's astonishment at the brutal waste of himself had already passed off his countenance. The open eyes saw nothing, but the lips were closed in sublime peace.
"And his sister," wept Angélique. "Look at Mademoiselle Zhone, also."
The dozen negroes, old and young, led by Achille, began to sob in music one of those sweet undertone chants for the dead which no race but theirs can master. They sung the power of the man and the tenderness of the young sister whose soul followed her brother's, and they called from that ark on the waters for saints and angels to come down and bless the beds of the two. The bells intoned with them, and a sinkingwind carried a lighter ripple against the house.
"Send them out," spoke Peggy Morrison, with an imperious sweep of the arm; and the half-breed authoritatively hurried the other slaves back to their doorway. The submissive race understood and obeyed, anxiously watching Peggy as she wavered in her erectness and groped with the fingers of both hands.
"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered Achille.
Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she said,—
"Go away. A Morrison never faints."
Angélique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.
"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right have you to cry?"
"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."
"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find another brilliant man."
"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."
Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.
Angélique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair, and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead. The house supply of wax tapers was in the submergedcellar. So she took the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn every sorrow into glory.
The night sent its quiet through the attic, though the bells which had clamored so over the destruction of verdure and homes appeared now to clamor louder over the destruction of youth.
"Do you understand this, Peggy? They died heretic and unblessed, yet I want to know what they now know until it seems to me I cannot wait. When I have been playing the harp to tante-gra'mère, and thinking so much, long, long afternoons, such a strange homesickness has grown in me. I could not make anybody believe it if I told it. These two have found out what is beyond. They have found out the great secret. Oh, Peggy,I do want to know it, also. There will be an awful mourning over them; and when they go into their little earthen cellars, people will pity that, and say, 'Poor things.' But they know the mystery of the ages now, and we know nothing. Do you think they are yet very far away? Monsieur Reece? Mademoiselle?"
Angélique's low interrogating call, made while she keenly listened with lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in this world, and pride in her love; long years of glad living on the verdure of earth in the light of the sun. One presence could make the common old world celestial enough for her. She had missed her desire. But Rice had turned his face to her as he died.
Two boats moved to the eaves and restedthere, shaken only by a ripple of the quieting water. The overflowed rivers would lie calm when the wind allowed it, excepting where a boiling current drove. The dazed girls yet seemed to dream through the strong indignation and the inquiry and fruitless plans of arriving men. It was a dream when Captain Saucier sat down and stared haggardly at the two who had perished under his roof, and Colonel Menard stood with his hat over his face. It was a dream when the brother and sister were lowered and placed on one pallet in a boat. The hollow of the rafters, the walls on which one might mark with his nail, the waiting black faces, the figures toiling down the roof with those loads,—were any of these sights real?
"Wrap yourselves," said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Angélique. "The other boat is quite ready for you."
"But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the rowers?"
"I am myself going with them."
"Papa," urged Angélique, "Mademoiselle Zhone was a young girl. If I were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my head?"
"But you cannot go."
"No, but Peggy can."
"Peggy would rather go with you."
"I am sure she will do it."
"Will you, Peggy?"
"Yes, I will."
So Angélique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the window. It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.
"Good-by, dear Peggy," whispered Angélique; for the other seemed starting on the main journey of her life.
"Good-by, dear Angélique."
Peggy's eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at Angélique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice's head in the boat. She had him to herself. Between the water and the sky, and within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him. He was her own while the boatfelt its way across the waste. The rowers sat on a bench over the foot of the pallet. Captain Saucier was obliged to steer. Peggy sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never claim again.
The colonel put Angélique first into the waiting boat. Wachique was set in front of her, to receive tante-gra'mère when the potentate's chrysalid should be lowered. For the first time in her life Angélique leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility. Colonel Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out. The sense of moving in a picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the realities of life followed Angélique into the boat. She was worn to exhaustion. Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.
There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed without annoying tante-gra'mère, but their mothers begged to keep them until all could go together.
"Now, my children," said Colonel Menard, "have patience for another hour or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off. The house is safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it. A few people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water rose."
Achille promised to take charge of his master's household. But one of the women pointed to the stain on the floor. The lantern yet burned at the head of Rice's deserted pillows. Superstition began to rise from that spot. They no longer had Angélique among them, with her atmosphere of invisible angels.
"That is the blood of the best man in the Territory," said Colonel Menard. "I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who spilled it. Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the morning? Go into the other room and fasten the door, then. Achille will show you that he can stay here alone."
"If mo'sieu' the colonel would let me go into that room, too"—
"Go in, Achille," said the colonel indulgently.
Colonel Menard made short work of embarking tante-gra'mère. In emergencies, he was deft and delicate with his hands. She never knew who caught her in coverlets and did her up like a papoose, with a pillow under her head.
"Pull westward to the next street," he gave orders to his oarsmen. "We found it easy going with the current that way. It will double the distance, but give us less trouble to get into dead water the other side of the Okaw."
Early summer dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain. Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became a mere monotonous background for other sounds. A breath stole from the east, bringing thescent of rain-washed earth and foliage and sweet mints. There was no other wind; and the boat shot easily on its course alongside a thicket made by orchard treetops. Some birds, maybe proprietors of drowned nests, were already complaining over these, or toppling experimentally down on branch tips.
Kaskaskia had become a strange half-town, cut off around its middle. It affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate crosses in the churchyard?
The flood strangely lifted and forced skyward the plane of life, yet lowered all life'sfunctions. An open and liberal sky, dappling with a promise from the east, bent over and mocked paralyzed humanity.
The noble bluffs had become a sunken ridge, water meeting the forests a little below their waists. From their coverts boats could now be seen putting out in every direction, and, though the morning star was paling, each carried a light. They were like a party of belated fireflies escaping from daylight. Faces in dormer windows waited for them. Down by the Jesuit College weak hurrahs arose from people on roofs.
"The governor has come with help for us," said Pierre Menard.
In this dead world of Kaskaskia not a dog barked; not one of the shortened chimney-stacks smoked. Some of the houses had their casements closed in terrible silence; but out of others neighbors looked and greeted Angélique in the abashed way peculiar to people who have not got used to an amputation, and are sensitive about their new appearance in the world. Heads leanedout, also, firing jokes after the boat, and offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops for a seat in his conveyance.
Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford. The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.
The slender voice of a violin stole acrossthe water,—an exorcism of the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia. As the boat reached the tavern corner, this thread of melody was easily followed to the ballroom on the second floor of the tavern, where the Assembly balls were danced. A slave, who had nothing but his daily bread to lose, and who would be assured of that by the hand of charity when his master could no longer maintain him, might take up the bow and touch the fiddle gayly in such a time of general calamity. But there was also dancing in the ballroom. The boat turned south and shot down a canal bordered by trunkless shade trees, which had been one of the principal streets of Kaskaskia. At the instant of turning, however, Father Baby could be seen as he whirled, though his skinny head and gray capote need not have added their evidence to the exact sound of his foot which came so distinctly across the water. His little shop, his goods, his secret stocking-leg of coin,—for Father Baby was his own banker,—were buried out of sight. Hiscrop in the common fields and provision for winter lay also under the Mississippi. His late lodger had taken to the river, and was probably drowned. He had no warrant except in the nimbleness of his slave's legs that he even had a slave left. Yet he had never in his life felt so full of dance. The flood mounted to his head like wine. Father Olivier was in the tavern without forbidding it. Doubtless he thought the example an exhilarating one, when a grown-up child could dance over material loss, remembering only the joy of life.
Wachique had felt her bundle squirm from the moment it was given to her. She enlarged on the hint Colonel Menard had given, and held the drapery bound tightly around the prisoner. The boat shot past the church, and over the spot where St. John's bonfire had so recently burnt out, and across that street through which the girls had scampered on their Midsummer Night errand.
"But stop," said Colonel Menard; andhe pointed out to the rowers an obstruction which none of them had seen in the night. From the Jesuit College across the true bed of the Okaw a dam had formed, probably having for its base part of the bridge masonry. Whole trees were swept into the barricade. "We cannot now cross diagonally and come back through the dead water at our leisure, for there is that dam to be passed. Pull for the old college."
The boat was therefore turned, and thus took the same course that the girls had taken. The current was at right angles with its advance, though the houses on the north somewhat broke that force. The roofless building, ridiculously shortened in its height, had more the look of a fortress than when it was used as one. The walls had been washed out above both great entrances, making spacious jagged arches through which larger craft than theirs could pass. Colonel Menard was quick to see this; he steered and directed his men accordingly. The Jesuit College was too well built to crumble on the headsof chance passers, though the wind and the flood had battered it; to row through it would shorten their course.
Angélique did not say a word about the changed aspect of her world. A warmth in the pearly light over the bluffs promised a clear day: and how Kaskaskia would look with the sun shining on her predicament! The boat cut through braiding and twisting water, and shot into the college. Part of the building's upper floor remained; everything else was gone.
The walls threw a shadow upon them, and the green flicker, dancing up and down as they disturbed the inclosure, played curiously on their faces. The stones suddenly echoed a slap. Tante-gra'mère's struggling wrath, which Wachique had tried to keep bound in the coverlet, having found an outlet, was swift as lightning in its reprisal. The stings of the whiplash had exhilaration and dignity compared to this attack. It was the climax of her midget rages. She forgot the breeding of a gentlewoman, and furiously struck her slave in the face.
Wachique started up, her Pottawatomie blood painting her cheek bones. That instant she was an Indian, not a slave. She remembered everything this petted despot had done to her, and, lifting her bundle, threw it as far as her arms could send it across the water floor of the college. The pitiful little weight sunk with a gurgling sound.
"Sit down, woman!" shouted Colonel Menard.
Wachique cowered, and tried to obey. But the motion she had given the boat was not to be overcome. It careened, and the water rushed over their knees, filled it full, and became a whirlpool of grasping hands and choking heads.
The overturned boat, wedged partially under the flooring, lodged against the eastern wall. Both negro rowers came up from their plunge and climbed like cats upon this platform, smearing a mire of sodden plastering over their homespun trousers as they crawled. One of them reached down andcaught the half-breed by the hair, as she rose at the edge of the flooring. Between them they were able to draw her up.
The shock of a cold flood around Angélique's ears sent life as vivid as fire through her brain. The exhaustion and stupor of the night were gone. She felt her body swallowed. It went down to the floor where the girls had walked when they chanted, "Hempseed, I sow thee." It rose, and all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it took mighty possession of her. She was so healthily, so happily lodged. It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her. Then Colonel Menard was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once more, and to a solid support under her melting life. She lay on the floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped from her ears. A slow terrorwhich had underlain all these physical perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame. Her great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at the bottom of the old college. It was really not a minute, but minutes are long to the drowning. Angélique caught her breath, saying, "Tante-gra'mère!" She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes before he dived.
The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward, open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and sickening sound.
"Where is he?" demanded Angélique, creeping also to her trembling knees. "Where is monsieur the colonel?"
Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face.Not a bubble broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.
As the driving of steel it went through Angélique that the aching and passion and ferocity which rose in her were love. She loved that man under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for what was life, with him there? She must have loved him when she was a child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, "Good-day, mademoiselle." She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,—had owned the very coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence among men. She loved Colonel Menard—and he was gone.
"Turn over the boat!" screamed Angélique. "He is caught in the cellars of this old house,—the floors are broken. We must find him. He will never come up."
The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds, made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, whichshook as they moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment. The oars were fast in the rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of getting the boat righted.
"Why does he not come up? Does any one stay under water as long as this? Oh, be quick! Turn it,—turn it over!" Angélique reached down with the men to grasp the slippery boat, her vivid will giving their clumsiness direction and force. They got it free and turned it, dipping a little water as they did so; but she let herself into its wet hollow and bailed that out with her hands. The two dropped directly after her, and with one push of the oars sent the boat over the spot where Colonel Menard had gone down.
"Which of you will go in?"
"Ma'amselle, I can't swim," piteously declared the older negro.
"Neither can I, ma'amselle," pleaded the other.
"Then I shall have to go in myself. Icannot swim, either, and I shall die, but I cannot help it."
The desperate and useless impulse which so often perishes in words returned upon her with its absurdity as she stared down, trying to part the muddy atoms of the Mississippi. The men held the boat in a scarcely visible stream moving from west to east through the gaps in the building. They eyed her, waiting the motions of the Caucasian mind, but dumbly certain it was their duty to seize her if she tried to throw herself in.