This apostrophe was addressed to the absent Winklemann.
One inch more, five minutes longer, and the flood would reach the bodies of the old couple. Liz looked round wildly for some mode of delivering them, but looked in vain. Even if her strength had been adequate, there was no higher object in the room to which she could have lifted them. The bed, being a truckle one, and lower than the chairs, was already submerged, and old Liz herself was coolly, if not calmly, seated in two inches of water. At the very last moment deliverance came in an unexpected manner. There was a slight vibration in the timbers of the hut, then a sliding of the whole edifice. This was followed by a snap and a jolt: the ring-bolt or the rope had gone, and old Liz might, with perfect propriety, have exclaimed, in the words of the sea song, “I’m afloat! I’m afloat! and the Rover is free!”
For one moment her heart failed; she had read of Noah’s ark, but had never quite believed in the stability of that mansion. Her want of faith was now rebuked, for the old hut floated admirably, as seamen might say, on an even keel. True, it committed a violent assault on a tree at starting, which sent it spinning round, and went crashing through a mass of drowned bushes, which rendered it again steady; but these mishaps only served to prove the seaworthiness of her ark, and in a few minutes the brave little woman revived. Splashing off the bed and spluttering across the room, she tried to open the door with a view to see what had happened and whither they were bound, for the two windows of the mansion were useless in this respect, being fitted with parchment instead of glass. But the door was fast, and refused to open.
“We’ll a’ be lost!” exclaimed Daddy, in alarm, for he had been awakened by the shock against the tree, and was now slightly alive to their danger.
“Ver is mine boy?” asked the old frau, in a whimpering voice.
“Nae fear o’ ’ee,” said Liz, in a soothing tone. “Him that saved Noah can save us.”
“Open the door an’ see where we are, lassie,” said the old man.
“It’ll no’ open, Daddy.”
“Try the wundy, then.”
“I’m sweer’d to break the wundy,” said Liz. “Losh, man, I’ll try the lum!”