"You're a brave fellow, and I honor you," cried he. "I'll be your friend, and a true one, or my name's not Charles Rodez!"
The poor miller with his wife and child were taken to a house prepared to receive and succor the unfortunate victims of the inundation. Food and warm clothing and beds were here ready for the half-starved and half-drowned families that were arriving continually—poor, despairing people who had most of them lost their little all, and some of them a father, or husband, or child.
Scarcely had Marcel, cold and wet, but very happy, been borne off in triumph by his comrades, when there appeared on the road, coming toward the village, a great truck drawn by two horses, and loaded with a large boat and its oars.
Polycarpe and his friend Priat had been successful in their search, and were now returning at the head of the little band of Colonists who had followed them to Saint-Pierre.
The people in the water-logged houses of the village fairly screamed with hope and joy when they saw the procession, and then the boat taken off and launched. A dozen Colonists were eager to jump in, but Polycarpe and Priat were given the precedence, and they, with another well-grown youth, presently pushed off into the fast and furious stream. It was hard work to keep clear of the drifting beams that were hurled along, rather than carried, by the current through the narrow streets of the village; harder still to get the boat near enough to each tottering house to take off the frightened family from the roof or out of the windows.
Once, indeed, it came near being swamped, with eight persons on board, by the sudden falling of a wall of the house from which they had just been saved. Polycarpe's quick eye saw the coming danger in time to give such a vigorous pull with his oar that the boat sprang forward just out of reach of the stones and beams, but she was so violently rocked by the concussion of the falling materials with the water that it seemed a miracle that she did not capsize.
And once, too, the brave boy missed his footing as he climbed on a roof to take off a lame old man, and fell headlong into the water. An admirable swimmer and diver, he did not lose his presence of mind, but passed under the boat and came up on the other side; he was soon hauled in by poor Priat, who was more frightened and affected by this accident than by any other event of that terrible day.
All day long the work of rescue went on. When the three rowers were exhausted with fatigue, three others took their places. There was not one among the young Colonists who hung back or shirked the danger; not one who did not give proof of courage and Christian charity. The boat went and came, until, at last, one after another, all the poor peasants were in safety. When night fell, not a house of the village was left standing, but not a life had been lost.