And all the while, in their bewilderment and distress, both mother and daughter had entirely forgotten that Jem was with them in the house when the water began to come in, and that they had not seen him since.
CHAPTER XII.
DESERTED.
WHEN Bob, carrying the baby, ran down in answer to his mother’s call, Jem remained where he was, looking out at the storm. In spite of the natural feeling of nervousness, he enjoyed seeing the lightning flash out from the thick bank of heavy clouds, showing their shapes where all had seemed one mass of dull gray, and dart in a brilliant jagged streak across the sky. For a little time he forgot everything else in this strange pleasure. In his mind was the thought that it was like seeing fireworks, only that no fireworks were half so grand.
Flash after flash. Peal after peal. There had not been such a thunder-storm here for years. Jem forgot even to look at the pool stretching across the road; but when at last he did bring his eyes down again to the earth, it was to see that the sheet of water, starred all over with the plashing rain-drops, extended now in places actually over the pavement. A cab came along, and the boy laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the concern of the old lady inside, who kept putting out her head and telling the cabman to go another way, while he insisted on driving straight forwards, splashing up the very centre of the road, without paying the slightest heed to the old lady’s anger.
Jem watched until the cab and its occupant were safe on dry land, or rather on land as dry as any could be in such a rain.
“I wonder what it’s like at the back,” he said then. And when the flashes grew less frequent, and seemed to come more from behind the house, he ran into the bed-room that looked on the yard where Mrs. Kayll and Madge were wont to hang out the clothes to dry every week, and on numbers of other back windows and other yards, where other people also hung out their clothes to dry.
The ground here was pretty nearly covered with standing water, but there was at present nothing much to be seen, except that in the next yard but one several little jets of water forced their way here and there through the fence and spurted fiercely into the inclosure. Beyond this last fence was a large space of open ground not yet built upon and sloping gently upwards, so that the rain ran down the incline until checked by the wooden palings. There it rose and rose, and the jets grew larger as the water wore for itself a passage, but the weight beyond was too great to be kept back long by such a feeble barricade. It gave way suddenly with a report like that of a pistol, and the boards were flung here and there as the flood dashed onwards, sweeping away in its course the next fence, and then those on each side of the Kaylls’ yard, while at the same time Jem felt the floor shake under his feet.
At this he shrank back from the window in horror, for there in an instant was water all round him, and nothing left standing of the divisions between the yards but a post here and there, like the last relics of a wrecked vessel.
Running out into the passage with a vague intention of getting away at once into safety, Jem was about to descend the stairs, when he found to his consternation that the lowest steps were out of sight in muddy water.