A SAD DISCOVERY
The horror-stricken Terry thought no more about his wife, whom he was
in the act of lifting through the trap-door, but let go her hand,
allowing her to drop with a crash that shook the whole building.
“Where is the child?” he asked, facing the elder daughter.
“Yonder; I was trying to hold her when she slipped away and rolled
down the slope of the roof—”
But the father waited to hear no more. Just then the cry of his baby
reached his ear, and he caught a glimpse of the white clothing which
helped to buoy her up. Like an athlete, running along a spring-board
to gather momentum for his tremendous leap, he took a couple of steps
down the incline of the roof to the edge, from which he made a
tremendous bound far out in the muddy torrent.
It was the energy of desperation and the delirium of paternal
affection itself which carried him for a long way over the water, so
that when he struck, one extended arm seized the shoulder of his
child, while the other sustained both from sinking.
Poor Katie, who had been gasping for breath, now began crying, and the
sound was welcome to the parent, for it proved that she was alive. Had
she been quiet he would have believed she was drowned.
The trees which grew so thickly in the little valley served another
good purpose in addition to that already named. The most powerful
swimmer that ever lived could not make headway against such a torrent,
nor indeed hold his own for a moment.
Terry would have been quickly swept beyond sight and sound of the rest
of his family had he not grasped a strong, protruding limb by which he
checked his progress.
“Are ye there, Terry?”
It was his wife who called. She had heard the frenzied cry of the
elder girl at the moment she went downward herself with such a
resounding crash. She was as frantic as her husband, and did that
which would have been impossible at any other time. Grasping the sides
of the trap-door, she drew herself upward and through with as much
deftness as her husband a few minutes before. She asked the agonized
question at the moment her head and shoulders appeared above the roof.
“Yis, I’m here, Delia,” he called back, “and Katie is wid me.”
“Hiven be praised!” was the fervent response of the wife; “I don’t
care now if the owld shanty is knocked into smithereens.”
The speech was worthy of an Irishwoman, who never thought of her own
inevitable fate in case the catastrophe named should overtake her
dwelling while she was on the roof. She could dimly discern the
figures of her husband and child, as the former clung to the friendly
limb.
“If yer faat are risting so gintaaly on the ground,” said the wife,
who supposed for the moment he was standing on the earth and grasping
the branch to steady himself, “why doesn’t ye walk forward and jine
us?”
“If my faat are risting on the ground!” repeated Terry: “and if I were
doing the same, I would be as tall as a maating-house wid the staaple
thrown in.”
“Thin would ye loike to have us join _ye_?” persisted the wife.
“Arrah, Delia, now are ye gone clean crazy, that ye talks in that
style? Stay where ye be, and I would be thankful if I could get back
to ye, which the same I can’t do.”
The wife had been so flustered that her questions were a little mixed,
but by the time she was fairly seated on the roof, with one arm
encircling Maggie, who clung, frightened and crying, to her, she began
to realize her situation.
“Terry,” she called again, “are ye not comfortable?”
“Wal, yis,” replied the fellow, whose waggery must show itself, now
that he believed the entire family were safe from the flood, “I faals
as comfortable, thank ye, as if I was standing on me head on the top
of a barber’s pole. How is it wid yerself, me jewel?”
“I’m thankful for the blissing of our lives; but why don’t ye climb
into the traa and take a seat?”
“I will do so in a few minutes.”
There was good ground for this promise. Although Terry had been
sustaining himself only a brief while, he felt the water rising so
rapidly that the crown of his head, which was several inches below the
supporting limb, quickly touched it, and as he shifted his position
slightly it ascended still farther. While sustaining his child he
could not lift both over the branch, but, with the help of the
current, would soon be able to do so.
Requesting his wife to hold her peace for the moment, he seized the
opportunity the instant it presented itself, and with comparatively
little outlay of strength, placed himself astride the branch. This was
all well enough, provided the flood did not keep on ascending, but it
was doing that very thing, and his perch must speedily become
untenable.
His refuge, however, was a sturdy oak, whose top was fully twenty feet
above him, and, like its kind, was abundantly supplied with strong
branches, so near each other that it was not difficult for the father
to climb to a safe point, where he was confident the furious waters
could never reach him.
Having seated himself in a better position than before, he surveyed
his surroundings with some degree of composure.
“Delia,” he called, “I obsarve ye are there yit.”
“I’m thankful that yer words are the thruth, and if ye kaap on
climbing ye’ll be in the clouds by morning.”
Now, while the rising torrent had proven of great assistance in one
way to Terry and his infant child, it threatened a still graver peril
to the mother and Maggie, who remained on the roof.
The house, being of wood, was liable to be lifted from its foundations
and carried in sections down-stream. In that event it would seem that
nothing could save the couple from immediate drowning.
Neither the husband nor wife thought of this calamity until she called
out, under the stress of her new fear:
“Terry, the owld building can’t stand this.”
“What do ye maan, me darling?”
“I faal it moving under me as though its getting onaisy—oh! _we’re
afloat_!”
The exclamation was true. The little structure, after resisting the
giant tugging at it as though it were a sentient thing, yielded when
it could hold out no longer. It popped up a foot or two like a cork,
as if to recover its gravity, and the next moment started down the
torrent.
It was at this juncture that Terry uttered the despairing cry which
brought Dick Halliard and Jim McGovern hurrying to the spot on the
shore directly opposite.
But unexpected good fortune attended the shifting of the little
building from its foundations. Swinging partly around, it drifted
against the tree in which Terry had taken refuge with his child. His
wife and Maggie were so near that he could touch them with his
outstretched hand.
“Climb into the limbs,” he said, “for the owld shebang will soon go to
pieces.”
He could give little help, since he had to keep one arm about Katie,
but the wife was cool and collected, now that she fully comprehended
her danger. The projecting limbs were within convenient reach, and it
took her but a minute or two to ensconce herself beside her husband
and other child.
Quick as was the action it was not a moment too soon, for she was
hardly on her perch and safely established by the side of all that was
dear to her when the house broke into a dozen fragments, the roof
itself disintegrating, and every portion quickly vanished among the
tree-tops in the darkness.
“Helloa, Terry, are you alive?” called Dick Halliard.
“We’re all alive, Hiven be praised!” replied the Irishman, “and are
roosting among the tree-tops.”
“It will be all right with you then,” was the cheery response, “for I
don’t think the flood will rise any higher.”
“Little odds if it does, for we haven’t raiched the top story of our
new risidence yit.”
Just then a dark object struck the ground at the feet of the boys,
swinging around like a log of wood. Seeing what it was, Dick Halliard
stooped down and drew it out of the current.
“What is it?” asked McGovern, in a whisper, seeing as he spoke that it
was a human body. “Great Heavens! it is Tom Wagstaff!”
“So it is,” replied Dick, “and he is dead.”
“And so is Bobb Budd!”