A Hard Fight.
Richard Frayne opened his eyes, to gaze about him dreamily for some little time before he could grasp what had happened and where he was. Then a throbbing in his head and a sensation of smarting assailed him, but he did not stir, for his legs were cramped; and wash, wash, wash, the waters were sweeping along nearly to his chest.
At last, with a bound, full consciousness returned, and he realised that he was lying wedged in amongst a pile of broken woodwork, evidently a great shed or barn which had been swept down the river till its progress had been checked by a clump of elm-trees, and the force of the water had rent it up and piled the broken posts and rafters, driving them, and pressing them by its weight into a chaotic mass, over and through which the torrent rushed.
The drowning lad had been driven heavily by the force of the stream right upon this wreck, head and shoulders above the surface, and, though the water had torn and dragged at him afterwards, it was only to wedge him in more firmly, so that it was some time before he could free his legs from where they were, fast between two beams, the heavy pressure of the water forcing them ever down toward where it rushed furiously through the timbers. But at last he managed to climb higher and rest, panting, upon the sloping mass of woodwork, with the water streaming from him and the hot sunshine beginning to send a glow into his benumbed limbs.
He was so far down the river now that the country round beyond the flooded meadows looked strange; but he soon grasped the fact that he was on the far side of the river at the edge of a wood, among whose trees the stream was hissing as it ran, and that about a hundred yards away the land rose in a sunny coppice, edged by tall timber trees, whose continuity was suggestive of a road.
It was pleasant and warm there, and he lay for some time without feeling the slightest disposition to stir, till a creaking and cracking sound startled him into action, suggestive as it was of the breaking up of the pile of timber. And now, in an agony of fear, Richard rose to his knees and looked wildly round for a way of escape.
On three sides there was the rushing flood; on the fourth the water, broken into hundreds of little torrents, tearing among the trees.
What should he do?
His brain was active enough now, and, to a great extent, his strength had returned; but he hesitated to move, till another sharp crack told him that the wreck was really breaking up; and, with the wood quivering beneath his feet, he sprang from rafter to beam till he reached one of the trees which held the barn anchored, and was beginning to climb up, when the wood before him tempted him to try if he could not pass from tree to tree, clinging to them in turn till he could reach the slope, where he would be safe.
The risk was terrible, for, as he held on to a tree-trunk and lowered himself down into the water, it bore him off his feet; and, had he not clung with all his might, he would have been whirled away and dashed against the one beyond.