Suddenly I was wide awake. No dream or unusual sound had roused me. Some new danger must be impending. My pulses throbbed. The clock at the head of my cot ticked regularly, and its hands pointed to four. The sisters slept peacefully side by side. The whole town seemed resting after the intense and continued anxiety caused by the storm, and I wondered why I had wakened.
However, something impelled me to get up, and, rising quietly from my cot in order not to arouse the others, I went to the south window and peered out.
My heart fairly stood still.
The waters were upon us! They had already covered the lower steps at the door not six feet from the cot on which I had slept. I stood motionless. If I knew that the waters were receding, I would go quietly to bed, allowing the others to sleep an hour longer; but if they were rising there was no time to lose. None could reckon on the tides now, for all previous records had been recently broken. I would wait and watch a few minutes, I decided, and I wrapped a blanket around me, for my teeth chattered, and I shivered.
How cruel the water looked as I watched it creep closer and closer. How quietly now it swept at flood tide up through the piles under the warehouse, covering the little back yard and the kitchen steps of the restaurant. With the cunning of a thief it was creeping upon us in the darkness when we were asleep and helpless.
Would the resistless waters persist in our destruction? Where should we go in the storm if obliged to fly for our lives?
Twenty minutes passed.
Another step was covered while I watched—the tide was rising.
Crossing the room now to where my friends lay sleeping, I touched little sister upon the shoulder.
"Wake up! Wake up! The tide is coming,—the water is almost at the door! I have been watching it for twenty minutes, and I'm sure we ought to be dressed," said I, trying to keep my voice steady so as neither to betray my fright nor startle them unnecessarily.