When day had dawned a wild, weird scene was revealed. The town had become an island. On all sides the flood-waters stretched out, covering gardens and farms, and completely blotting out the fair landscape. On the riverside the turgid stream tore along in its hurry, bearing on its dirty, foam-crested bosom, as its spoils, the household gods, farm stock, and produce of many a settler. Horses, cattle, pigs, goats, dogs, fowls: these, swept off by the encroaching waters, and carried over fences into the stream, struggled, vainly for the most part, in the rapid, death-dealing current. Haystacks, barns, wood-frame buildings intact, floated in the torrential waters, sooner or later crashing into the great trees that bore down-stream, making utter shipwreck.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS
"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves."—Ps. xciii. 3.
"Where's the dad, girls?" shouted Joe Blain early in the morning, after the events recorded in the previous chapter, dashing into the room as he yelled.
"Here!" came a voice from the back verandah. Running to the spot indicated by the monosyllable, the lad in breathless accents delivered himself to his paternal relative in this fashion—
"Please, dad, can Tom, Billy, Jimmy, and I have the boat to paddle out on the back-water?"
"Um—er—well, as long as you keep in the slack water I suppose you may; but be very careful, my boy."
"Yes, dad; we'll be careful enough. It's all slack water you know, 'cept where the river water comes in; but that's a long way up, an' we'll be paddlin' mostly about this end of the slack."
An explanation is needed here in order that the reader may intelligently follow the course of events (some of them dramatic enough, and even tragic) which transpired in the course of this eventful cruise.