She waited for him to continue, but he said no more, and both resumed their work in silence.
By tearing up one of the young lady's skirts into strips and twisting these, they made cables with which Ben bound the layers of cottonwood firmly together at the corners, and in the centre. The raft being made in the style of a "mattrass" such as the celebrated jettie cribs rest upon at the mouth of the river, and which are to take Nature by the ears and show the old Dame how she should walk the straight and narrow path. Before the middle of the afternoon it would uphold Ben, and by sundown both could safely float upon it.
"We will not start in the dark," said he, "for we need daylight for the attempt, and a breeze that will give us a chance to reach the point below. Early in the morning we will give up Crusoe life, and surrender our domain back to solitude."
Both retired to the hut in high hopes of the morrow's relief, and ere they slept an earnest prayer of thanks for their safety and supplications for the success of their efforts was sent to Him who holds the whole world in the hollow of his hand.
Then they slept—soundly, if not sweetly—for both were exhausted.
Slept—while the great river went rolling by on its way to the sea.
Slept—while from the north, from the east, from the west, from thousands of meadow brooks and mountain torrents, from hundreds of springs and rills, from woodland and from moor, the dragoons of Death rode out on the flood and bore down upon them!
Ben awoke with a cry of alarm. He was wet through, and the floor of their hut was flooded! With wild thoughts surging through his brain and horrible fears palsying his heart, he sprang to his feet and looked out. And there before his eyes, glistening in the morning sunlight, lay one vast expanse of water! The island was already submerged by the flood, and the raft gone!
What words can depict the horrors of that moment! Hope? There was no hope, nothing but despair! Great, gigantic, crushing despair! Man was powerless—he could not push back the hand of God!
The fall rains had swollen the northern rivers, and they had discharged their superabundance into the Mississippi, and that stream was now rising at the rate of a foot an hour. Already it was over the island and the cottonwood brake stood in a field of water. Ben would have been aroused sooner were it not that he had located his hut on a little knoll in the sand, higher by a foot than its surroundings. Bertha, reposing upon an elevation of boughs within still slept, but the hungry river was now licking her garments, impatient for its prey. For an instant he thought to plunge into the flood and end his miseries at once and for ever. Then he looked at the sleeping girl and the prayer sprang to his lips: "Oh God! Take me but spare her!" and kneeling by her side he gazed so fondly yet so sorrowfully into her face, and then waked her with a kiss. She looked up with a smile. But the smile quickly turned to a look of terror, at the words quietly but earnestly uttered: