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.