"My child, you are panting for breath, your forehead is covered with perspiration, your strength is being exhausted; I perceived it by the shaking of your oars. We will reach these people in time; the water is not rising any longer, I have seen by sure signs. We are going to need all our energy and all our strength. Now, five minutes' rest taken at the right time may ensure those persons' safety as well as our own. Come, drink a few swallows of wine."
Frederick followed this advice, and realised the benefit of it, for already, without having dared confess it to David, he felt in the joints of his arms that numbness and rigidity which always succeed too much fatigue and muscular tension.
During this period of enforced delay the preceptor and his pupil looked upon the scene around them with silent horror.
From the point where they were they commanded an immense extent of water, no longer dead, such as they had just passed over, but rapid, foaming, impetuous as the course of a torrent.
From this vast expanse of water arose such a roar that from one end of the little boat to the other Frederick and David were obliged to shout aloud, in order to hear each other.
In the distance a line of dark gray water was the only thing which marked the horizon.
About six hundred steps from the boat they saw the farmhouse.
The roof had almost completely disappeared under the waters, and human forms grouped around the chimney could be vaguely distinguished.
Every moment, at a little distance from the craft, protected from collision by the three poplars, which served as a sort of natural palisade, thanks to David's foresight, floated all kinds of rubbish, carried along on the current which the little boat was to cross in a few moments.
On one side, beams and girders, and fragments of carpentry proceeding from the crumbling buildings; on the other side, enormous haycocks and stacks of straw, lifted from their base and dragged solidly along by the waters, like so many floating mountains, submerging everything they encountered; again, gigantic trees, torn up by the roots, rushed rapidly by as lightly as bits of straw upon a babbling brook, while in their rear followed doors unloosed from their hinges, furniture, mattresses, and casks, and sometimes in the midst of these wrecks could be seen cattle, some drowned, others struggling above the abyss soon to disappear under it, and, in strange contrast, domestic ducks, instinctively following the other animals, floated over the water in undisturbed tranquillity. Elsewhere, heavy carts were whirled above the gulf, and sometimes sank under the irresistible shock of immense floats of wood a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide borne along with the drift.