With a bed slat for a crutch, Bartlot labored up the stairway, young Renaud lifting and tugging to the limit of his strength. Somehow they accomplished it though Bartlot fell unconscious when the last step was achieved. Diamonds in their leather roll and some useless radio junk had no particular value in a crisis like this. Nevertheless, Renaud returned to the first floor and carried these possessions, some tins of food, and a couple of soggy blankets up the slippery stair. Step by step, the hungry waters crept up and up behind him.
What would the end be? Would this sagging, sinking building last much longer? A booming detonation hurled a negative answer to the question.
A floating mass of logs and uprooted trees had crashed into a portion of the old house. Lower and lower in the flood tide rode the battered derelict. The water was coming up to the second floor.
There was still the cupola tower above the roof. If they could reach that! With a blanket knotted under the unconscious man’s arms, Lee began to drag him up the narrow, ladder-like stair that led into this turret. His heart was sick at the horrible jolting he had to inflict on the injured man. A blessing on his unconsciousness! It must hold him in its pall until—until—now they were up!
Lee carried their belongings up this second flight, and wedged the trapdoor down between them and that creeping flood below. Here was safety until the house battered to pieces in the torrent.
Jan Bartlot came out of his stupor and lay very still, clenching his teeth against groaning.
Death lurked near. To keep his mind off the boom and thunder of the flood, off the lap of water creeping, creeping up toward their last refuge, Lee Renaud bent over his wrecked radio. His fingers straightened a loop of aerial here, made a connection there, cranked at the motor shaft for power. It was all no use. Too much of the selenized plate wiring missing! But he had to be doing something.
Crouching in this last lift of floor space, he idly drew his pencil point back and forth across the tiny receiver plate, outlining the mesh of missing wires—and almost screamed as a faint buzzing seemed to follow in the path of the pencil lines.
Extraordinary! Out of all reason! Electricity following a pencil line as though it were a wire!
A faint hope burned!