"I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see you again? And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much. But something may happen. It is so strange, and like another world, this water."
Tante-gra'mère screamed, and Angélique disappeared from the window-sill. It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman. The keen small shriek was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain Saucier was made limp by it.
"What shall I do?" he asked his family.
"I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that."
"Perhaps she will go at dawn," suggested Angélique. "The wind may sink. The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water."
"But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn. We shall all be drowned here before she will budge," lamented Madame Saucier.
"Leave her with me," urged Peggy Morrison, "and the rest of you go with Colonel Menard. I'll manage her. She will be ready to jump out of the window into the next boat that comes along."
"We cannot leave her, Peggy, and we cannot leave you. I am responsible to your father for your safety. I will put you and my family into the boat, and stay with her myself."
"Angélique will not leave me!" cried the little voice among the screens.
"Are you ready to lower them?" called Colonel Menard.