Near at hand was the main bridge connecting the college suburb with the town, substantial steel trusses resting upon stone piers. It was still standing, and was apparently intact, though the water was up to the level of the floor, and the flood was constantly hurling floating drift wreckage against it.
“How about it?” said Dick, with awe in his voice. “Think it’ll hold?”
“Don’t seem as if it could,” Larry doubted. Then: “We’ll have to hurry. If the bridge should go, we’d be cut off. It would take the levee with it, sure.”
It was a rather foolhardy thing to do; to risk their lives for the sake of a trifling property salvage, but in such times of excitement even a pretty level-headed person is likely to do things that wouldn’t stand the test of a little cool reasoning and good judgment. Hurrying along on the inner edge of the wide embankment, they soon came opposite the house they had marked from the other side, but it was only to find that the seepage lake was already lapping half-way up the window openings, and that there was no possible chance of saving anything.
“Hard luck for the poor woman,” said Dick, and then, at a great splash and a shudder that set the solid embankment trembling under their feet: “Look at that, will you?”
“That” was a huge landslide on the river side of the levee; a gigantic bite taken out of the solid earth a short distance from where they were standing. What it meant became instantly apparent. With the flood gnawing hungrily in the gap it would be but a short time until the levee must be breached and the river would pour through.
It was a trying moment for the two who stood alone on the threatened barrier. True enough, their way of escape was still open. All they had to do was to run back to the Main Street bridge and so gain the street and sprint to safety up the hill to higher ground. But, on the other hand, there were people on the lower ground, drenched groups lingering in the hope of still being able to save something from their dwellings. And on the rising lake, paddling to and fro among the slowly submerging houses, were a number of the Sheddon rescuers, all unconscious of the fate that was reaching for them.
“Hi, there, you fellows!” shouted Dick, being the first to find his tongue, “paddle for it and drive those people up the hill!—the levee’s breaking!”
The shouted-out warning didn’t do a bit of good. What with the crackling roar of the bonfires, the shouts of the rescuers, and the growling thunder of the flood, nothing short of a steam siren could have made itself heard from the top of the embankment.
“It’s no use!” Larry bawled in Dick’s ear. “They can’t hear, and we’ve got to get ’em out of there quick. Come on!”