"The police!" was the answer.
Jeff, who had been awakened, heard this answer. He covered his head with the clothes, and cowered down in the bed.
"Oh, mah good land!" thought Jeff when he heard this. "De p'lice has done come to git me 'cause I took de China Cat! Oh, good land! I ain't so smart as I thought! Oh, dey's gwine 'rest me suah!"
But the police had not come to get Jeff. Once more the officer pounded with his club on the basement door.
"Come there!" he cried. "Get up and dress and skip out if you don't want to be drowned! The river is rising. It will flood all these basement tenements! You'll have to clear out—all of you! Wake up and get out! We'll help you! Open the door!"
"Oh, massy me! A flood!" cried Jeff's mother. "Does yo' heah dat, Rastus?" she called to her husband. "Dere's a flood an' we's done got to run out! Git up an' open de do' an' I'll roust up de chilluns!"
"I'll open the do,' Ma," said Jeff, slipping out of his bed, and as he swung the door open there stood a policeman.
"Come, boy; lively!" cried the officer. "You were long enough answering my knock. You've all got to leave here! How many of you are there?"
"Ten," answered Jeff, and he looked over the mantel shelf to see if the officer noticed the China Cat.
But the policeman had something else to do just then. He and others had been sent to the tenement district, near the rising river, to rouse and save the poor people from the flood.