“Quick, quick,” cried Harry, shoving Hector up, “it will be upon us in a few seconds, and may carry the ladder away.”
On it came, surging up against the walls of the house. Reggy caught hold of Hector’s hand and handed him up on the branch.
“We must get higher up than this,” he shouted; “look there! look there!”
Harry again turned round. The house seemed literally to melt away before the flood. The water rose around it, and then, as the wave rushed on, the fragments of the walls and roof were seen floating on mixed with articles of furniture, chairs, tables, and bedsteads. Now the wave surged against the tree. Harry had just time to spring on to the branch, and to secure the ladder by a rope when the lower end was lifted, and it would have been carried away by the flood had it not thus fortunately been secured. The lads watched the various articles as they floated by, hopelessly lost, for in a few minutes they would be driven by the current against the trunks of trees, or the rocks, and would be dashed to pieces.
By climbing out to the end of a branch Harry was able to see where his father and uncle were standing, and to make a signal to them that he and his cousins were safe. This must greatly have relieved the mind of the captain and his brother, though they probably still considered the lads in greater danger than they themselves were inclined to believe that they were.
Several trees had been uprooted and carried along by the torrent, and theirs might share the same fate. Harry returned again to the end of the branch, and found that his father and uncle had gone away to look after the party on the hill.
Harry now proposed that they should get higher up, for the water had already risen several feet above the ground, and might in a short time be up to the branch in which they sat. Higher and higher they got.
“When is it going to stop?” cried Reggy. “Harry, do you think this is such a flood as that which drowned all mankind except Noah’s family?”
“I’m very sure it is not,” answered Harry. “God promised never to send such another, and put His bow in the clouds as a token. I have heard of many such floods in this country, though this, to be sure, is higher than any we have known, and I cannot account for it; but I have not the slightest doubt that it will stop before long, though no doubt it will have done a great deal of damage. That cannot be helped. It might have come on at night, and we might all have been washed away before we knew where we were, or fifty other things might have happened. We have reason to be thankful, as matters might have been worse.”
“I don’t see how that could be,” cried Hector. “To have to take refuge in a tall tree, cut off from all help, without anything to eat or drink, is as bad as one can well conceive.”