The agony of these wretched beings had already lasted five hours. Overcome by terror, they seemed no longer to see or to hear.
When David, arriving within the range of the voice, called out to them, "Try to seize the rope that I throw to you!" there was no response. Those whom he had come to save seemed absolutely petrified.
Realising that the shipwrecked were often incapable of assisting in their own rescue, David acted promptly, for the gable end, as well as the remainder of the roof, threatened to sink in the abyss every moment.
The little boat, pushed by the current, was managed in such a way as to touch the ruins of the building on the side opposite to that most likely to fall; then, while Frederick, hanging on with both hands to a projecting beam, held the craft on the side of the roof, David, one foot on the prow, and the other on the unsteady rafters, took hold of the mother with a strong arm, and placed her and the child in the bottom of the boat. Then the intelligence of the poor people, stupefied by cold and fright, seemed suddenly to awaken.
Jean François, holding by one hand to the rope, handed his two children over into the arms of David and Frederick, and then descended himself into the little boat, and stretched himself out by the side of his wife and children under the warm covering,—all remaining as motionless as possible for fear of upsetting the craft in its passage to the dead waters. Scarcely had Frederick taken up his oars to row away from the ruins of the farmhouse, when the whole mass was engulfed.
The reflux caused by the sinking of this mass of ruins was so violent, that a tremendous surge lifted the little boat a moment, then, when it sank, Frederick discovered, about ten steps from him in the middle of a wave of spouting foam, the yawl of the marquis, turned half-way, on its gunwale, and ready to capsize under the weight of an entanglement of carpentry and stones, for the canoe had touched the farmhouse ruins just about the time of the final wreck.
Frederick, at the sight of the canoe's danger, suspended the motion of his oars an instant, and cried, as he turned around to David:
"What is to be done to help them? Must I—"
He did not finish.
He left his oars, and leaped to the front of the little boat, and plunged into the water.