The Flood | Page 7

disappear.
The women, at our feet, had buried their faces in their clasped hands. We, ourselves, fell to our knees, our arms outstretched, weeping, stammering supplications.
On the other roof Aimee, still standing, her children clasped to her bosom, howled mournfully into the night.
IV.
I know not how long we remained in a stupor after that tragedy. When I came to, the water had risen. It was now on a level with the tiles. The roof was a narrow island, emerging from the immense sheet. To the right and the left the houses must have crumbled.
"We are moving," murmured Rose, who clung to the tiles.
And we all experienced the effect of rolling, as if the roof had become detached and turned into a raft. The swift currents seemed to be drifting us away. Then, when we looked at the church clock, immovable opposite us, the dizziness ceased; we found ourselves in the same place in the midst of the waves.
Then the water began an attack. Until then the stream had followed the street; but the debris that encumbered it deflected the course. And when a drifting object, a beam, came within reach of the current, it seized it and directed it against the house like a battering-ram. Soon ten, a dozen, beams were attacking us on all sides. The water roared. Our feet were spattered with foam. We heard the dull moaning of the house full of water. There were moments when the attacks became frenzied, when the beams battered fiercely; and then we thought that the end was near, that the walls would open and deliver us to the river.
Gaspard had risked himself upon the edge of the roof. He had seized a rafter and drawn it to him.
"We must defend ourselves," he cried.
Jacques, on his side, had stopped a long pole in its passage. Pierre helped him. I cursed my age that left me without strength, as feeble as a child. But the defense was organized--a drill between three men and a river. Gaspard, holding his beam in readiness, awaited the driftwood that the current sent against us, and be stopped it a short distance from the walls. At times the shock was so rude that he fell. Beside him Jacques and Pierre manipulated the long pole. During nearly an hour that unending fight continued. And the water retained its tranquil obstinacy, invincible.
Then Jacques and Pierre succumbed, prostrated; while Gaspard, in a last violent thrust, had his beam wrested from him by the current. The combat was useless.
Marie and Veronique had thrown themselves into each other's arms. They repeated incessantly one phrase--a phrase of terror that I still hear ringing in my ears:
"I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"
Rose put her arms about them. She tried to console them, to reassure them. And she herself, trembling, raised her face and cried out, in spite of herself:
"I don't want to die!"
Aunt Agathe alone said nothing. She no longer prayed, no longer made the sign of the cross. Bewildered, her eyes roamed about, and she tried to smile when her glance met mine.
The water was beating against the tiles now. There was no hope of help. We still heard the voices in the direction of the church; two lanterns had passed in the distance; and the silence spread over the immense yellow sheet. The people of Saintin, who owned boats, must have been surprised before us.
Gaspard continued to wander over the Roof. Suddenly he called us.
"Look!" he said. "Help me--hold me tight!"
He had a pole and be was watching an enormous black object that was gently drifting toward the house. It was the roof of a shed, made of strong boards, and that was floating like a raft. When it was within reach he stopped it with the pole, and, as he felt himself being carried off, he called to us. We held him around the waist.
Then, as the mass entered the current, it returned against our roof so violently that we were afraid of seeing it smashed into splinters.
Gaspard jumped upon it boldly. He went over it carefully, to assure himself of its solidity. He laughed, saying joyously:
"Grandfather, we are saved! Don't cry any more, you women. A real boat! Look, my feet are dry. And it will easily carry all of us!"
Still, he thought it well to make it more solid. He caught some floating beams and bound them to it with a rope that Pierre had brought up for an emergency. Gaspard even fell into the water, but at our screams he laughed. He knew the water well; he could swim three miles in the Garonne at a stretch. Getting up again, he shook himself, crying:
"Come, get on it! Don't lose any time!"
The women were on their knees. Gaspard had to carry Veronique and Marie to the