Suddenly, I heard a cry! Yes! even through that din and confusion I heard it, although now it seems scarcely believable.
“Deedreek! Deedreek! Save me!”
I left Zolca, and splashed through the water in the direction I had heard the cry. Another kindly flash and glare, and cannonade of thunder, showed me Azolta clinging to the stem of a tree. I plunged in, and brought her to the land, and then literally felt my way back to where I had left Zolca, and found him. He managed to get up and scramble to higher ground, and in a short time, we three, the sole survivors of the overwhelming calamity that had befallen us, met together.
As yet, in the darkness, we did not know the worst, but we knew, at least, that the worst had befallen ourselves. Our children and Zolca’s wife must have perished, and of the Quadruco people I dared not think. A gleam of lightning showed me an overhanging rock which I knew, and under its shelter I managed to get my two companions saved somewhat from the pitiless rain and wind.
Zolca and Azolta sank down exhausted, and I could only sit with my back against the rock and think. I knew what had happened. The long-continued gale had backed the tide up in the gorge I have before mentioned as terminating the end of the valley. This blocked the outflow of the flood-waters of the river, and they, of course, commenced to overflow the valley. Then, hurried on by the fierce blast from the north-west, an immense tidal wave had swept into the bay, rushed up the gorge, beating back the flood-waters, hurling them on to the doomed valley, and burying everything under fathoms of salt water and mud-laden flood.
The fitful gleams of vivid lightning showed me the surface of a storm-swept sea where once was our valley.
In abject misery the weary night passed over, and when the lagging dawn at last asserted itself, I could see nothing but an estuary of tossing, yellow water, still pelted by the terrible rainfall.
Zolca was still alive, and when the light was strong he looked imploringly at me. I raised him in my arms, and he saw the water on the slopes of the valley, covering everything belonging to him and his people. He gave one cry when he realized all the disaster, and, sinking back in my arms, his great heart broken, died without a shudder.
Roused by the death-wail of her twin-brother, Azolta rose from her sleep of exhaustion. One glance at Zolca’s face and glazed eyes showed her the truth. She threw herself on his body, and begged and prayed him to return to her. I tried to loosen her arms from the corpse, but could not do so without using force, and I had to stay there and listen to her moans without being able to help her.
The gale had blown itself out by mid-day, and the rain ceased for a while.