I found my poor little wife wet through and screaming for help; and lifting her in my arms, I carried her, buffeting with the water as I went, through the dining and drawing-rooms to the outer verandah.
‘Hold fast—take the greatest care of yourself,’ I exclaimed in an agony of fear, as I battled past the white-clad figure which was clinging to the door-posts. ‘I will return, Lionne, as soon as ever I can.’
‘I am not afraid; God will take care of me,’ was the calm reply; and I strode forwards into deeper and deeper water with each step. When I reached the verandah the struggle was severe, for there the waves were highest and strongest; but although much impeded by Janie’s terrified clasp, I managed to wade with her to the foot of the ladder, and as soon as I had accomplished two or three steps of that, the rest was easy. I toiled with my helpless burden up to the roof, despair lending strength to my limbs; and as soon as I had reached it, I found myself in a goodly company of natives, who, with a few unfortunate exceptions, had managed to gain the top of the house as soon as the flood had surprised them. Having delivered Janie to the care of the ayah, I rushed down again to the assistance of Lionne, my heart throbbing as though it would burst with the fear that my efforts might be made too late. The water was now higher than ever in the verandah, and I began to be afraid that I should have to swim back again. I dashed on as vigorously and quickly as I could towards the door, to the lintels of which I had left her clinging. She was not there!
The dark water was swaying and surging through the deserted rooms; the furniture was floating about in the most dire confusion; trunks, portmanteaus, and other trivial articles knocked up against me at every turn before they drifted out to sea; but my beloved I saw nowhere. In an agony I called upon her name, making the walls resound with my voice, caring nothing who heard or listened to me.
‘Lionne, Lionne! my dearest, my beloved! where are you? Speak to me.’
But no voice answered mine, no moan or groan reached my ears; and I waded into the chamber which had been my wife’s.
Ah, what was that?—that helpless mass of white drapery clinging about delicately-moulded limbs, which swayed about in one corner, prevented by the wall—thank gracious heaven!—from floating out to sea with chairs and tables, but being knocked against that cruel wall with every motion of the waves, until no apparent life was left in it.
I took her senseless body in my arms, thankful even in that condition to have it there; and lifting the dear white face above the reach of the impetuous tide, laid my cheek against her own, although I believed that human warmth would never again visit it. It was no time for words or even thought. I pressed her to me as fondly as though the waves had been our bridal bed; and resenting the despair which urged me to let the cruel water carry us both away together then and there, battled with it once more, and bore my treasure to the place of safety. But it was with feelings such as no words of mine can describe, that I laid her beauteous form, cold, dripping, on the bare bricks with which the roof is paved. I had already stripped myself of coat and waistcoat for Janie; and there was nothing on which to lay the senseless body of my darling but the wet cloths which the natives could contribute, and an old piece of carpet which was kept up there.
Meanwhile the hoarse flood continued to roll and murmur below, becoming deeper and deeper with each surge of the mass of waters; and cries of distress were heard from the surrounding houses; and the articles of furniture which floated past us began to be mingled with a vision of dead faces turned sightlessly towards the moon, now beginning to struggle out from behind the canopy of dark clouds which had hitherto concealed her. And still I bent above the face which had become so unutterably dear to me, and prayed heaven to let her know me once more, if but for a moment’s time.
Meanwhile poor Janie, exhausted by the fright she had undergone, and the grief she felt at the condition of her cousin, had fallen into a state which was half sleep and half syncope, and lay reclining with her head upon her ayah’s lap.