Dick and Larry: Freshmen

by Francis Lynde

As they pushed on toward the river there seemed to be every indication that the flood had already reached the danger line. In the darkness—and there were some localities which the street electrics, which were still going, did not reach—people were abandoning the lowland houses, many of them hurrying to higher ground with only such of their belongings as they could carry in their arms. Autos were coming and going in the downpour, and in the threatened area a little army of Sheddon men was at work, helping the inhabitants to save what they could.

In the lowest part of the district some of the houses were already surrounded by water which had seeped in through the old levee; had seeped in and was now coming in faster than ever as the river rose on the other side of the embankment. Some of the college men, owning canoes and row-boats, had dragged them over the levee to launch them in the flooded bottom, and when Larry and Purdick got on the ground these makeshift ferries were doing good work.

“Great Jehu!” Purdick gasped; “if that old levee should break through it would drown everybody!”

“Work’s the word!” Larry shouted, whereupon they jumped in with the first group of college men they came to and went at it.

That was the beginning of a pretty strenuous night for all concerned. Fortunately, there was a generous supply of willing workers, and after getting the people out to a place of safety, the salvagers turned in to save such of their belongings as could be gotten out of the houses and carried up to the higher ground. It was along about midnight that the rising flood put the electric lights out of commission, but after that, bonfires were built, and by the light of them the salvaging went on as best it could.

In the confusion Larry soon lost little Purdick, and about the time the bonfires were getting themselves built, he found himself working with a gang of the Zeta Omegas captained by Wally Dixon, whose bull-bellow of a voice could make itself heard in anything short of a boiler-shop. Dickie Maxwell was also in this gang, and Larry collared him at once for a team-mate.

“That house down yonder by the lumber pile,” Larry said, pointing; “the woman that lives in it told me just now that she hadn’t saved anything but her children and the clothes they stood in. Let’s get one of the boats and see if we can find something that’s worth carrying out.”

“There wouldn’t be much that we could put into one of these cockleshell canoes,” Dick returned. “But we can go around on the levee and get to the house easy by wading a little.”

That seemed perfectly feasible, so long as the levee was still holding, so they ran stumbling along in the uncertain light of the fires to the main street, which was on a fill, and thus reached the wide embankment bordering on the river. Here they had as good a view as the rain and darkness permitted of the situation, a view which had been hitherto cut off by the levee. On the “seaward” side of the levee, so to speak, the river was running bank-full, a muddy, tumultuous flood carrying wreckage of every description, uprooted trees, rafts of fence posts still linked together by their barbed wire, the gatherings from stream-side sawmills and lumber yards, and now and then a chicken coop or some other out-building bobbing up and down or rolling over as the strong current laid hold of it.