“We are no that fou, we are no that fou,But just a drappie in our ee;The cock may craw, the day may daw,But still we'll taste the barley bree.”
Ransome could hear the very words; he listened, he laughed, and then rode up the valley till he got opposite a crinoline-wire factory called the “Kildare Wheel.” Here he observed a single candle burning; a watcher, no doubt.
The next place he saw was also on the other side the stream; Dolman's farm-house, the prettiest residence in the valley. It was built of stone, and beautifully situated on a promontory between two streams. It had a lawn in front, which went down to the very edge of the water, and was much admired for its close turf and flowers. The farm buildings lay behind the house.
There was no light whatever in Dolman's; but they were early people. The house and lawn slept peacefully in the night: the windows were now shining, now dark, for small fleecy clouds kept drifting at short intervals across the crescent moon.
Ransome pushed on across the open ground, and for a mile or two saw few signs of life, except here and there a flickering light in some water-wheel, for now one picturesque dam and wheel succeeded another as rapidly as Nature permitted; and indeed the size of these dams, now shining in the fitful moonlight, seemed remarkable, compared with the mere thread of water which fed them, and connected them together for miles like pearls on a silver string.
Ransome pushed rapidly on, up hill and down dale, till he reached the high hill, at whose foot lay the hamlet of Damflask, distant two miles from Ousely Reservoir.
He looked down and saw a few lights in this hamlet, some stationary, but two moving.
“Hum,” thought Ransome, “they don't seem to be quite so easy in their minds up here.”
He dashed into the place, and drew up at the house where several persons were collected.
As he came up, a singular group issued forth: a man with a pig-whip, driving four children—the eldest not above seven years old—and carrying an infant in his arms. The little imps were clad in shoes, night-gowns, night-caps, and a blanket apiece, and were shivering and whining at being turned out of bed into the night air.
Ransome asked the man what was the matter
One of the by-standers laughed, and said, satirically, Ousely dam was to burst that night, so all the pigs and children were making for the hill.
The man himself, whose name was Joseph Galton, explained more fully.
“Sir,” said he, “my wife is groaning, and I am bound to obey her. She had a dream last night she was in a flood, and had to cross a plank or summut. I quieted her till supper; but then landlord came round and warned all of us of a crack or summut up at dam. And so now I am taking this little lot up to my brother's. It's the foolishest job I ever done: but needs must when the devil drives, and it is better so than to have my old gal sour her milk, and pine her suckling, and maybe fret herself to death into the bargain.”
Ransome seized on the information, and rode on directly to the village inn. He called the landlord out, and asked him what he had been telling the villagers. Was there any thing seriously amiss up at the reservoir?
“Nay, I hope not,” said the man; “but we got a bit of a fright this afternoon. A young man rode through, going down to Hillsborough, and stopped here to have his girth mended; he had broke it coming down our hill. While he was taking a glass he let out his errand; they had found a crack in the embankment, and sent him down to Hillsborough to tell Mr. Tucker, the engineer. Bless your heart, we should never have known aught about it if his girth hadn't broke.” He added, as a reason for thinking it was not serious that Mr. Tucker had himself inspected the dam just before tea-time, and hadn't even seen the crack. It was a laboring man who had discovered it, through crossing the embankment lower down than usual. “But you see, sir,” said he, in conclusion, “we lie very low here, and right in the track; and so we mustn't make light of a warning. And, of course, many of the workmen stop here and have their say; and, to tell you the truth, one or two of them have always misliked the foundation that embankment is built on: too many old landslips to be seen about. But, after all, I suppose they can empty the dam, if need be; and, of course, they will, if there is any danger. I expect Mr. Tucker up every minute.”
Ransome thanked him for his information and pushed on to Lower Hatfield: there he found lights in the houses and the inhabitants astir; but he passed through the village in silence, and came to the great corn-mill, a massive stone structure with granite pillars, the pride of the place. The building was full of lights, and the cranes were all at work hoisting the sacks of flour from the lower floors to the top story. The faces of the men reflected in the flaring gas, and the black cranes with their gaunt arms, and the dark bodies rising by the snake-like cords, formed a curious picture in the fluctuating moonlight, and an interesting one too; for it showed the miller did not feel his flour quite safe.
The next place Ransome came to was Fox Farm.
Farmer Emden was standing at the door of his house, and, in reply to Ransome, told him he had just come down from the reservoir. He had seen the crack and believed it to be a mere frost crack. He apprehended no danger, and had sent his people to bed; however, he should sit up for an hour or two just to hear what Tucker the engineer had to say about it; he had been sent for.
Ransome left him, and a smart canter brought him in sight of what seemed a long black hill, with great glow-worms dotted here and there.
That hill was the embankment, and the glow-worms were the lanterns of workmen examining the outer side of the embankment and prying into every part.
The enormous size and double slope of the bank, its apparent similarity in form and thickness to those natural barriers with which nature hems in lakes of large dimensions, acted on Ransome's senses, and set him wondering at the timidity and credulity of the people in Hatfield and Damflask. This sentiment was uppermost in his mind when he rode up to the south side of the embankment.
He gave his horse to a boy, and got upon the embankment and looked north.
The first glance at the water somewhat shook that impression of absolute security the outer side of the barrier had given him.
In nature a lake lies at the knees of the restraining hills, or else has a sufficient outlet.
But here was a lake nearly full to the brim on one side of the barrier and an open descent on the other.
He had encountered a little wind coming up, but not much; here, however, the place being entirely exposed, the wind was powerful and blew right down the valley ruffling the artificial lake.
Altogether it was a solemn scene, and, even at first glance, one that could not be surveyed, after all those comments and reports, without some awe and anxiety. The surface of the lake shone like a mirror, and waves of some size dashed against the embankment with a louder roar than one would have thought possible, and tossed some spray clean over all; while, overhead, clouds, less fleecy now, and more dark and sullen, drifted so swiftly across the crescent moon that she seemed flying across the sky.
Having now realized that the embankment, huge as it was, was not so high by several hundred feet as nature builds in parallel cases, and that, besides the natural pressure of the whole water, the upper surface of the lake was being driven by the wind against the upper or thin part of the embankment, Ransome turned and went down the embankment to look at the crack and hear opinions.
There were several workmen, an intelligent farmer called Ives, and Mr. Mountain, one of the contractors who had built the dam, all examining the crack.
Mr. Mountain was remarking that the crack was perfectly dry, a plain proof there was no danger.
“Ay, but,” said Ives, “it has got larger since tea-time; see, I can get my hand in now.”
“Can you account for that?” asked Ransome of the contractor.
Mountain said it was caused by the embankment settling. “Everything settles down a little—houses and embankments and all. There's no danger, Mr. Ransome, believe me.”
“Well, sir,” said Ransome, “I am not a man of science, but I have got eyes, and I see the water is very high, and driving against your weak part. Ah!” Then he remembered Little's advice. “Would you mind opening the sluice-pipes?”
“Not in the least, but I think it is the engineer's business to give an order of that kind.”
“But he is not here, and professional etiquette must give way where property and lives, perhaps, are at stake. To tell you the truth, Mr. Mountain, I have got the advice of an abler man than Mr. Tucker. His word to me was, 'If the water is as high as they say, don't waste time, but open the sluices and relieve the dam.'”
The workmen who had said scarcely a word till then, raised an assenting murmur at the voice of common sense.
Mountain admitted it could do no harm, and gave an order accordingly; screws wore applied and the valves of the double set of sluice-pipes were forced open, but with infinite difficulty, owing to the tremendous pressure of the water.
This operation showed all concerned what a giant they were dealing with; while the sluices were being lifted, the noise and tremor of the pipes were beyond experience and conception. When, after vast efforts, they were at last got open, the ground trembled violently, and the water, as it rushed out of the pipes, roared like discharges of artillery. So hard is it to resist the mere effect of the senses, that nearly every body ran back appalled, although the effect of all this roaring could only be to relieve the pressure; and, in fact, now that those sluices were opened, the dam was safe, provided it could last a day or two.
Lights were seen approaching, and Mr. Tucker, the resident engineer, drove up; he had Mr. Carter, one of the contractors, in the gig with him.
He came on the embankment, and signified a cold approval of the sluices being opened.
Then Ransome sounded him about blowing up the waste-wear.
Tucker did not reply, but put some questions to a workman or two. Their answers showed that they considered the enlargement of the crack a fatal sign.
Upon this Mr. Tucker ordered them all to stand clear of the suspected part.
“Now, then,” said he, “I built this embankment, and I'll tell you whether it is going to burst or not.”
Then he took a lantern, and was going to inspect the crack himself; but Mr. Carter, respecting his courage and coolness, would accompany him. They went to the crack, examined it carefully with their lanterns, and then crossed over to the waste-wear; no water was running into it in the ordinary way, which showed the dam was not full to its utmost capacity.
They returned, and consulted with Mountain.
Ransome put in his word, and once more remembering Little's advice, begged them to blow up the waste-wear.
Tucker thought that was a stronger measure than the occasion required; there was no immediate danger; and the sluice-pipes would lower the water considerably in twenty-four hours.
Farmer Ives put in his word. “I can't learn from any of you that an enlarging crack in a new embankment is a common thing. I shall go home, but my boots won't come off this night.”
Encouraged by this, Mr. Mountain, the contractor, spoke out.
“Mr. Tucker,” said he, “don't deceive yourself; the sluice-pipes are too slow; if we don't relieve the dam, there'll be a blow-up in half an hour; mark my words.”
“Well,” said Mr. Tucker, “no precaution has been neglected in building this dam: provision has been made even for blowing up the waste-wear; a hole has been built in the masonry, and there's dry powder and a fuse kept at the valve-house. I'll blow up the waste-wear, though I think it needless. I am convinced that crack is above the level of the water in the reservoir.”
This observation struck Ransome, and he asked if it could not be ascertained by measurement.
“Of course it can,” said Tucker, “and I'll measure it as I come back.”
He then started for the wear, and Carter accompanied him.
They crossed the embankment, and got to the wear.
Ives went home, and the workmen withdrew to the side, not knowing exactly what might be the effect of the explosion.
By-and-by Ransome looked up, and observed a thin sheet of water beginning to stream over the center of the embankment and trickle down: the quantity was nothing; but it alarmed him. Having no special knowledge on these matters, he was driven to comparisons; and it flashed across him that, when he was a boy, and used to make little mud-dams in April, they would resist the tiny stream until it trickled over them, and from that moment their fate was sealed. Nature, he had observed, operates alike in small things and great, and that sheet of water, though thin as a wafer, alarmed him.
He thought it was better to give a false warning than withhold a true one; he ran to his horse, jumped on him, and spurred away.
His horse was fast and powerful, and carried him in three minutes back to Emden's farm. The farmer had gone to bed. Ransome knocked him up, and told him he feared the dam was going; then galloped on to Hatfield Mill. Here he found the miller and his family all gathered outside, ready for a start; one workman had run down from the reservoir.
“The embankment is not safe.”
“So I hear. I'll take care of my flour and my folk. The mill will take care of itself.” And he pointed with pride to the solid structure and granite pillars.
Ransome galloped on, shouting as he went.
The shout was taken up ahead, and he heard a voice crying in the night, “IT'S COMING! IT'S COMING!” This weird cry, which, perhaps, his own galloping and shouting had excited, seemed like an independent warning, and thrilled him to the bone. He galloped through Hatfield, shouting, “Save yourselves! Save yourselves!” and the people poured out, and ran for high ground, shrieking wildly; looking back, he saw the hill dotted with what he took for sheep at first, but it was the folk in their night-clothes.
He galloped on to Damflask, still shouting as he went.
At the edge of the hamlet, he found a cottage with no light in it; he dismounted and thundered at the door: “Escape for your lives! for your lives!”
A man called Hillsbro' Harry opened the window.
“The embankrncnt is going. Fly for your lives!”
“Nay,” said the man, coolly, “Ouseley dam will brust noane this week,” and turned to go to bed again.
He found Joseph Galton and another man carrying Mrs. Galton and her new-born child away in a blanket. This poor woman, who had sent her five children away on the faith of a dream, was now objecting, in a faint voice, to be saved herself from evident danger. “Oh, dear, dear! you might as well let me go down with the flood as kill me with taking me away.”
Such was the sapient discourse of Mrs. Galton, who, half an hour ago, had been supernaturally wise and prudent. Go to, wise mother and silly woman; men will love thee none the less for the inequalities of thine intellect; and honest Joe will save thy life, and heed thy twaddle no more than the bleating of a lamb.
Ransome had not left the Galtons many yards behind him, when there was a sharp explosion heard up in the hills.
Ransome pulled up and said aloud, “It will be all right now, thank goodness! they have blown up the wear.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he heard a loud sullen roar, speedily followed by a tremendous hiss, and a rumbling thunder, that shook the very earth where he stood, two miles distant.
This is what had taken place since he left the reservoir, but ten minutes ago.
Mr. Tucker and Mr. Carter laid the gunpowder and the train, and lighted the latter, and came back across the middle of the embankment.
Being quite safe here from the effect of the explosion, Mr. Tucker was desirous to establish by measurement that the water in the reservoir had not risen so high as the crack in the embankment.
With this view he took out a measure, and, at some risk of being swept into eternity, began coolly to measure the crack downward.
At this very time water was trickling over; and that alarmed Carter, and he told Tucker they were trifling with their own lives.
“Oh,” said Tucker, “that is only the spray from the waves.”
They actually measured the crack, stooping over it with their lanterns.
When they had done that, Carter raised his head, and suddenly clutched Tucker by the arm and pointed upward. The water was pouring over the top, still in a thin sheet, but then that sheet was gradually widening. The water came down to their feet, and some of it disappeared in the crack; and the crack itself looked a little larger than when last inspected. Tucker said, gravely, “I don't like that: but let me examine the valve-house at once.” He got down to the valve-house, but before he could ascertain what quantity of water was escaping Carter called to him, “Come out, for God's sake, or you are lost.”
He came running out, and saw an opening thirty feet wide and nearly a foot deep, and a powerful stream rushing over it.
The moment Tucker saw that, he cried, “It's all up, the embankment must go!” And, the feeling of the architect overpowering the instincts of the man, he stood aghast. But Carter laid hold of him, and dragged him away.
Then he came to himself, and they ran across the embankment.
As they started, the powder, which had hung fire unaccountably, went off, and blew up the waste-wear; but they scarcely heard it; for, as they ran, the rent above kept enlarging and deepening at a fearful rate, and the furious stream kept rushing past their flying heels, and threatened to sweep them sideways to destruction.
They were safe at last; but even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving them, like corks, for miles.
At that appalling sound, that hissing thunder, the like of which he had never heard before, and hopes never to hear again, Ransome spurred away at all his speed, and warned the rest of the village with loud inarticulate cries: he could not wait to speak, nor was it necessary.
At the top of the hill he turned a moment, and looked up the valley; soon he saw a lofty white wall running down on Hatfield Mill: it struck the mill, and left nothing visible but the roof, surrounded by white foam.
Another moment, and he distinctly saw the mill swim a yard or two, then disappear and leave no trace, and on came the white wall, hissing and thundering.
Ransome uttered a cry of horror, and galloped madly forward, to save what lives he might.
Whenever he passed a house he shrieked his warning, but he never drew rein.
As he galloped along his mind worked. He observed the valley widen in places, and he hoped the flying lake would spread, and so lose some of that tremendous volume and force before which he had seen Hatfield stone mill go down.
With this hope he galloped on, and reached Poma Bridge, five miles and a half from the reservoir.
Here, to his dismay, he heard the hissing thunder sound as near to him as it was when he halted on the hill above Damflask; but he could see nothing, owing to a turn in the valley.
At the bridge itself he found a man standing without his hat, staring wildly up the valley.
He yelled to this man, “Dam is burst. Warn the village—for their lives—run on to Hillsborough—when you are winded, send another on. You'll all be paid at the Town Hall.”
Then he dashed across the bridge.
As he crossed it, he caught sight of the flying lake once more: he had gone over more ground, but he had gone no further. He saw the white wall strike Dolman's farm; there was a light in one window now. He saw the farm-house, with its one light, swim bodily, then melt and disappear, with all the poor souls in it.
He galloped on: his hat flew off; he came under the coiners' house, and yelled a warning. A window was opened, and a man looked out; the light was behind him, and, even in that terrible moment, he recognized—Shifty Dick.
“The flood! the flood! Fly! Get on high ground, for your lives!”
He galloped furiously, and made for Little's house.
Little took a book, and tried to while away the time till Ransome's return; but he could not command his attention. The conversation about Grace had excited a topic which excluded every other.
He opened his window, a French casement, and looked out upon the night.
Then he observed that Grace, too, was keeping vigil; for a faint light shot from her window and sparkled on the branches of the plane-tree in her little front garden.
“And that,” thought Henry, sadly, “is all I can see of her. Close to her, yet far off—further than ever now.”
A deep sadness fell on him, sadness and doubt. Suppose he were to lay a trap for her to-morrow, and catch her at her own door! What good would it do? He put himself in her place. That process showed him at once she would come no more. He should destroy her little bit of patient, quiet happiness, the one daily sunbeam of her desolate life.
By-and-by, feeling rather drowsy, he lay down in his clothes to wait for Ransome's return. He put out his light.
From his bed he could see Grace's light kiss the plane-tree.
He lay and fixed his eyes on it, and thought of all that had passed between them; and, by-and-by, love and grief made his eyes misty, and that pale light seemed to dance and flicker before him.
About midnight, he was nearly dozing off, when his ear caught a muttering outside; he listened, and thought he heard some instrument grating below.
He rose very softly, and crept to the window, and looked keenly through his casement.
He saw nothing at first; but presently a dark object emerged from behind the plane-tree I have mentioned, and began to go slowly, but surely up it.
Little feared it was a burglar about to attack that house which held his darling.
He stepped softly to his rifle and loaded both barrels. It was a breech-loader. Then he crawled softly to the window, and peered out, rifle in hand.
The man had climbed the tree, and was looking earnestly in at one of the windows in Grace's house. His attention was so fixed that he never saw the gleaming eye which now watched him.
Presently the drifting clouds left the moon clear a minute, and Henry Little recognized the face of Frederick Coventry.
He looked at him, and began to tremble.
Why did he tremble? Because—after the first rush of surprise—rage, hate, and bloody thoughts crossed his mind. Here was his enemy, the barrier to his happiness, come, of his own accord, to court his death. Why not take him for a burglar, and shoot him dead? Such an act might be blamed, but it could not be punished severely.
The temptation was so great, that the rifle shook in his hands, and a cold perspiration poured down his back.
He prayed to God in agony to relieve him from this temptation; he felt that it was more than he could bear.
He looked up. Coventry was drawing up a short iron ladder from below. He then got hold of it and fixed it on the sill of Grace's window.
Little burst his own window open. “You villain!” he cried, and leveled his rifle at him.
Coventry uttered a yell of dismay. Grace opened her window, and looked out, with a face full of terror.
At sight of her, Coventry cried to her in abject terror, “Mercy! mercy! Don't let him shoot me!”
Grace looked round, and saw Henry aiming at Coventry.
She screamed, and Little lowered the rifle directly.
Coventry crouched directly in the fork of the tree.
Grace looked bewildered from one to the other; but it was to Henry she spoke, and asked him in trembling tones what it “all meant?”
But, ere either could make a reply, a dire sound was heard of hissing thunder: so appalling that the three actors in this strange scene were all frozen and rooted where they stood.
Then came a fierce galloping, and Ransome, with his black hair and beard flying, and his face like a ghost, reined up, and shouted wildly, “Dam burst! Coming down here! Fly for your lives! Fly!”
He turned and galloped up the hill.
Cole and his mate emerged, and followed him, howling; but before the other poor creatures, half paralyzed, could do any thing, the hissing thunder was upon them. What seemed a mountain of snow came rolling, and burst on them with terrific violence, whirling great trees and fragments of houses past with incredible velocity.
At the first blow, the house that stood nearest to the flying lake was shattered and went to pieces soon after: all the houses quivered as the water rushed round them two stories high.
Little never expected to live another minute; yet, in that awful moment, his love stood firm. He screamed to Grace, “The houses must go!—the tree!—the tree!—get to the tree!”
But Grace, so weak at times, was more than mortal strong at that dread hour.
“What! live with him,” she cried, “when I can die with you!”
She folded her arms, and her pale face was radiant, no hope, no fear.
Now came a higher wave, and the water reached above the window-sills of the bedroom floor and swept away the ladder; yet, driven forward like a cannon-bullet, did not yet pour into the bed-rooms from the main stream; but by degrees the furious flood broke, melted, and swept away the intervening houses, and then hacked off the gable-end of Grace's house, as if Leviathan had bitten a piece out. Through that aperture the flood came straight in, leveled the partitions at a blow, rushed into the upper rooms with fearful roar, and then, rushing out again to rejoin the greater body of water, blew the front wall clean away, and swept Grace out into the raging current.
The water pouring out of the house carried her, at first, toward the tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her. He awoke from his stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but then the main force of the mighty water drove her away from him toward the house; her helpless body was whirled round and round three times, by the struggling eddies, and then hurried away like a feather by the overwhelming torrent.
The mighty reflux, which, after a short struggle, overpowered the rush of water from the windows, and carried Grace Carden's helpless body away from the tree, drove her of course back toward the houses, and she was whirled past Little's window with fearful velocity, just as he was going to leap into the flood, and perish in an insane attempt to save her. With a loud cry he seized her by her long floating hair, and tried to draw her in at the window; but the mighty water pulled her from him fiercely, and all but dragged him in after her; he was only saved by clutching the side of the wall with his left hand: the flood was like some vast solid body drawing against him; and terror began to seize on his heart. He ground his teeth; he set his knee against the horizontal projection of the window; and that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth together, and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of the water by an effort almost superhuman. Such was the force exerted by the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that not her shoes only, but her stockings, though gartered, were torn off her in that fierce struggle.
He had her in his arms, and cried aloud, and sobbed over her, and kissed her wet cheeks, her lank hair, and her wet clothes, in a wild rapture. He went on kissing her and sobbing over her so wildly and so long, that Coventry, who had at first exulted with him at her rescue, began to rage with jealousy.
“Please remember she is my wife,” he shrieked: “don't take advantage of her condition, villain!”
“Your wife, you scoundrel! You stole her from me once; now come and take her from me again. Why didn't you save her? She was near to you. You let her die: she lives by me, and for me, and I for her.” With this he kissed her again, and held her to his bosom. “D'ye see that?—liar! coward! villain!”
Even across that tremendous body of rushing death, from which neither was really safe, both rivals' eyes gleamed hate at each other.
The wild beasts that a flood drives together on to some little eminence, lay down their natures, and the panther crouches and whimpers beside the antelope; but these were men, and could entertain the fiercest of human passions in the very jaws of death.
To be sure it was but for a moment; a new danger soon brought them both to their senses; an elm-tree whirling past grazed Coventry's plane-tree; it was but a graze, yet it nearly shook him off into the flood, and he yelled with fear: almost at the same moment a higher wave swept into Little's room, and the rising water set every thing awash, and burst over him as he kneeled with grace. He got up, drenched and half-blinded with the turbid water, and, taking Grace in his arms, waded waist-high to his bed, and laid her down on it.
It was a moment of despair. Death had entered that chamber in a new, unforeseen, and inevitable form. The ceiling was low, the water was rising steadily; the bedstead floated; his chest of drawers floated, though his rifle and pistols lay on it, and the top drawers were full of the tools he always had about him: in a few minutes the rising water must inevitably jam Grace and him against the ceiling, and drown them like rats in a hole.
Fearful as the situation was, a sickening horror was added to it by the horrible smell of the water; it had a foul and appalling odor, a compound of earthiness and putrescence; it smelt like a newly-opened grave; it paralyzed like a serpent's breath.
Stout as young Little's heart was, it fainted now when he saw his bedstead, and his drawers, and his chairs, all slowly rising toward the ceiling, lifted by that cold, putrescent, liquid death.
But all men, and even animals, possess greater powers of mind, as well as of body, than they ever exert, unless compelled by dire necessity: and it would have been strange indeed if a heart so stanch, and a brain so inventive, as Little's, had let his darling die like a rat drowned in a hole, without some new and masterly attempt first made to save her.
To that moment of horror and paralysis succeeded an activity of mind and body almost incredible. He waded to the drawers, took his rifle and fired both barrels at one place in the ceiling bursting a hole, and cutting a narrow joist almost in two. Then he opened a drawer, got an ax and a saw out, and tried to wade to the bed; but the water now took him off his feet, and he had to swim to it instead; he got on it, and with his axe and his saw he contrived to paddle the floating bed under the hole in the ceiling, and then with a few swift and powerful blows of his ax soon enlarged that aperture sufficiently; but at that moment the water carried the bedstead away from the place.
He set to work with his saw and ax, and paddled back again.
Grace, by this time, was up on her knees, and in a voice, the sudden firmness of which surprised and delighted him, asked if she could help.
“Yes,” said he, “you can. On with my coat.”
It lay on the bed. She helped him on with it, and then he put his ax and saw into the pockets, and told her to take hold of his skirt.
He drew himself up through the aperture, and Grace, holding his skirts with her hands and the bed with her feet, climbed adroitly on to the head of the bed—a French bed made of mahogany—and Henry drew her through the aperture.
They were now on the false ceiling, and nearly jammed against the roof: Little soon hacked a great hole in that just above the parapet, and they crawled out upon the gutter.
They were now nearly as high as Coventry on his tree; but their house was rocking, and his tree was firm.
In the next house were heard the despairing shrieks of poor creatures who saw no way of evading their fate; yet the way was as open to them as to this brave pair.
“Oh, my angel,” said Grace, “save them. Then, if you die, you go to God.”
“All right,” said Henry. “Come on.”
They darted down the gutter to the next house. Little hacked a hole in the slates, and then in the wood-work, and was about to jump in, when the house he had just left tumbled all to pieces, like a house of sugar, and the debris went floating by, including the bedstead that had helped to save them.
“O God!” cried Little, “this house will go next; run on to the last one.”
“No, Henry, I would rather die with you than live alone. Don't be frightened for me, my angel. Save lives, and trust to Jesus.”
“All right,” said Little; but his voice trembled now.
He jumped in, hacked a hole in the ceiling, and yelled to the inmates to give him their hands.
There was a loud cry of male and female voices.
“My child first,” cried a woman, and threw up an infant, which Little caught and handed to Grace. She held it, wailing to her breast.
Little dragged five more souls up. Grace helped them out, and they ran along the gutter to the last house without saying “Thank you.”
The house was rocking. Little and Grace went on to the next, and he smashed the roof in, and then the ceiling, and Grace and he were getting the people out, when the house they had just left melted away, all but a chimney-stack, which adhered in jagged dilapidation to the house they were now upon.
They were now upon the last. Little hacked furiously through the roof and ceiling, and got the people out; and now twenty-seven souls crouched in the gutter, or hung about the roof of this one house; some praying, but most of them whining and wailing.
“What is the use of howling?” groaned Little.
He then drew his Grace to his panting bosom, and his face was full of mortal agony.
She consoled him. “Never mind, my angel. God has seen you. He is good to us, and lets us die together.”
At this moment the house gave a rock, and there was a fresh burst of wailing.
This, connected with his own fears, enraged Henry.
“Be quiet,” said he, sternly. “Why can't you die decently, like your betters?”
Then he bent his head in noble silence over his beloved, and devoured her features as those he might never see again.
At this moment was heard a sound like the report of a gun: a large tree whirled down by the flood, struck the plane-tree just below the fork, and cut it in two as promptly as a scythe would go through a carrot.
It drove the upper part along, and, going with it, kept it perpendicular for some time; the white face and glaring eyes of Frederick Coventry sailed past these despairing lovers; he made a wild clutch at them, then sank in the boiling current, and was hurried away.
This appalling incident silenced all who saw it for a moment. Then they began to wail louder than ever.
But Little started to his feet, and cried “Hurrah!”
There was a general groan.
“Hold your tongues,” he roared. “I've got good news for you. The water was over the top windows; now it is an inch lower. The reservoir must be empty by now. The water will go down as fast as it rose. Keep quiet for two minutes, and you will see.”
Then no more was heard but the whimpering of the women, and, every now and then, the voice of Little; he hung over the parapet, and reported every half-minute the decline of the water; it subsided with strange rapidity, as he had foreseen.
In three minutes after he had noticed the first decline, he took Grace down through the roof, on the second floor.
When Grace and Henry got there, they started with dismay: the danger was not over: the front wall was blown clean out by the water; all but a jagged piece shaped like a crescent, and it seemed a miracle that the roof, thus weakened and crowded with human beings, had not fallen in.
“We must get out of this,” said Little. “It all hangs together by a thread.”
He called the others down from the roof, and tried to get down by the staircase, but it was broken into sections and floating about. Then he cut into the floor near the wall, and, to his infinite surprise, found the first floor within four feet of him. The flood had lifted it bodily more than six feet.
He dropped on to it, and made Grace let herself down to him, he holding her round the waist, and landing her light as a feather.
Henry then hacked through the door, which was jammed tight; and, the water subsiding, presently the wrecks of the staircase left off floating, and stuck in the mud and water: by this means they managed to get down, and found themselves in a layer of mud, and stones, and debris, alive and dead, such as no imagination had hitherto conceived.
Dreading, however, to remain in a house so disemboweled within, and so shattered without, that it seemed to survive by mere cohesion of mortar, he begged Grace to put her arm round his neck, and then lifted her and carried her out into the night.
“Take me home to papa, my angel,” said she.
He said he would; and tried to find his way to the road which he knew led up the hill to Woodbine Villa. But all landmarks were gone; houses, trees, hedges, all swept away; roads covered three feet thick with rocks, and stones, and bricks, and carcasses. The pleasant valley was one horrid quagmire, in which he could take few steps, burdened as he was, without sticking, or stumbling against some sure sign of destruction and death: within the compass of fifty yards he found a steam-boiler and its appurtenances (they must have weighed some tons, yet they had been driven more than a mile), and a dead cow, and the body of a wagon turned upside down: [the wheels of this same wagon were afterward found fifteen miles from the body].
He began to stagger and pant.
“Let me walk, my angel,” said Grace. “I'm not a baby.”
She held his hand tight, and tried to walk with him step by step. Her white feet shone in the pale moonlight.
They made for rising ground, and were rewarded by finding the debris less massive.
“The flood must have been narrow hereabouts,” said Henry. “We shall soon be clear of it, I hope.”
Soon after this, they came under a short but sturdy oak that had survived; and, entangled in its close and crooked branches, was something white. They came nearer; it was a dead body: some poor man or woman hurried from sleep to Eternity.
They shuddered and crawled on, still making for higher ground, but sore perplexed.
Presently they heard a sort of sigh. They went toward it, and found a poor horse stuck at an angle; his efforts to escape being marred by a heavy stone to which he was haltered.
Henry patted him, and encouraged him, and sawed through his halter; then he struggled up, but Henry held him, and put Grace on him. She sat across him and held on by the mane.
The horse, being left to himself, turned back a little, and crossed the quagmire till he got into a bridle-road, and this landed them high and dry on the turnpike.
Here they stopped, and, by one impulse, embraced each other, and thanked God for their wonderful escape.
But soon Henry's exultation took a turn that shocked Grace's religious sentiments, which recent acquaintance had strengthened.
“Yes,” he cried, “now I believe that God really does interpose in earthly things; I believe every thing; yesterday I believed nothing. The one villain is swept away, and we two are miraculously saved. Now we can marry to-morrow—no, to-day, for it is past midnight. Oh, how good He is, especially for killing that scoundrel out of our way. Without his death, what was life worth to me? But now—oh, Heavens! is it all a dream? Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
“Oh, Henry, my love!” said Grace imploringly; “pray, pray do not offend Him, by rejoicing at such a moment over the death, perhaps the everlasting death, of a poor, sinful fellow-creature.”
“All right, dearest. Only don't let us descend to hypocrisy. I thank Heaven he is dead, and so do you.”
“Pray don't SAY so.”
“Well, I won't: let him go. Death settles all accounts. Did you see me stretch out my hand to save him?”
“I did, my angel, and it was like you: you are the noblest and the greatest creature that ever was, or ever will be.”
“The silliest, you mean. I wondered at myself next minute. Fancy me being such an idiot as to hold out a hand to save him, and so wither both our lives—yours and mine; but I suppose it is against nature not to hold out a hand. Well, no harm came of it, thank Heaven.”
“Let us talk of ourselves,” said Grace, lovingly. “My darling, let no harsh thought mar the joy of this hour. You have saved my life again. Well, then, it is doubly yours. Here, looking on that death we have just escaped, I devote myself to you. You don't know how I love you; but you shall. I adore you.”
“I love you better still.”
“You do not: you can't. It is the one thing I can beat you at and I will.”
“Try. When will you be mine?”
“I am yours. But if you mean when will I marry you, why, whenever you please. We have suffered too cruelly, and loved too dearly, for me to put you off a single day for affectations and vanities. When you please, my own.”
At this Henry kissed her little white feet with rapture, and kept kissing them, at intervals, all the rest of the way: and the horrors of the night ended, to these two, in unutterable rapture, as they paced slowly along to Woodbine Villa with hearts full of wonder, gratitude, and joy.
Here they found lights burning, and learned from a servant that Mr. Carden was gone down to the scene of the flood in great agitation.
Henry told Grace not to worry herself, for that he would find him and relieve his fears.
He then made Grace promise to go to bed at once, and to lie within blankets. She didn't like that idea, but consented. “It is my duty to obey you now in every thing,” said she.
Henry left her, and ran down to the Town Hall.
He was in that glorious state of bliss in which noble minds long to do good actions; and the obvious thing to do was to go and comfort the living survivors of the terrible disaster he had so narrowly escaped.
He found but one policeman there; the rest, and Ransome at their head, were doing their best; all but two, drowned on their beat in the very town of Hillsborough.