第198章 CHAPTER XLV.(2)

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.