“Come, Frank,” she said. “We must run along the bank, and see if we can be of any help at all.”
The weeping youngster brightened up a little, as seizing him by the hand she dragged him along with her, both running for all they knew. But the ground was rough and uneven; if it had not been they could never have kept pace with the swiftness of the flood. Then it dipped abruptly, yet still they managed to stumble along. Up the next rise, panting, their hearts beating as though they would burst, and then—they saw Warren and his burden suddenly sink from sight. At the same time Lalanté’s foot caught in some twisted grass, and down she came, full length, dragging the boy with her.
She tried to get up, but could not do more than struggle to her knees, then fall again. She was too utterly breathless and exhausted to be capable of making further effort. The last she had seen of them, too, was as a numbing physical blow. She could only lie there panting in great sob-like gasps. The little fellow threw his arms round her neck and sobbed too.
“Oh, Lala, will they get out? Do say. Will they get out?”
Even then Warren’s words were hammering in her brain ”...against which the strongest swimmer would have that much chance”; words uttered calmly and authoritatively, scarce a minute before he himself had taken that fatal leap. What chance then had he—had they? And they had already gone under.
“Darling, I’m afraid there’s—there’s—no hope,” she said, unsteadily. “But come. We will walk along the bank—I am quite powerless to run any more—in case we should sight them again. Tell me. How did it happen?”
“We were standing on the bank, shying sticks into the river and watching them float down. Then a great piece of the bank gave way, and Charlie was in.”
Lalanté could hardly restrain a storm of tears. One of her little brothers—her darling little brothers—of whom she was so fond, and who looked up to her for everything, to be carried away like this by the great cruel river, and drowned before her very eyes—oh, it was too awful! What a tale, too, to carry back to their father! And the prompt, cool, brave man—he who at that very moment had been expressing the hope that he might never be called upon to stand such a test, because if so he was sure he would be found wanting—he too had gone, had given his life for that of another. Lalanté was not a Catholic, but human instinct is ever the same, and if ever prayers went up that a soul should have its eternal reward, one went up—none more fervent—from her during those awful moments on behalf of Warren.
The rain had begun again, and was now a steady downpour, while lower and lower the murk descended, blotting out the opposite rand. Great shiny songo-lolos, or “thousand legs,” squirmed among the mimosa sprays in repulsive festoons, and in the splashy softness of the thoroughly soaked ground—ordinarily so hard and arid—the foot sank or slipped. The river, too, in whose ordinarily nearly dry bed the small boys had so often disported themselves, or catapulted birds along the banks—now a great bellowing monster—had taken its toll of one of them. All was in keeping, as the darkness brooded down; the splash of the rain, the hopelessness, the death, the despair; a scene, a setting of indescribable gloom and horror, as these two dragged themselves wearily step by step, staring at the long rush of foam-flecked flood in a very whirlwind of grief. Then, upon the blackness of this misery, came a sound.
“Lala—did you hear that?” panted the boy, eagerly.