The Red Man's Revenge: A Tale of The Red River Flood, R. M. Ballantyne [pride and prejudice read .txt] 📗

upon the bed and watched, as the water rose inch by inch on the legs of the two chairs.

“What wull I do whan it grups them?” she muttered, experiencing that deep feeling of anticipation with which one might watch the gradual approach of fire to gunpowder.

The objects of her solicitude snored pleasantly in concert.

“It’ll kill them wi’ the cauld, to say naething o’ the start,” continued the old woman with deepening, almost desperate, anxiety. “Oh man, man, what for did ye leave us?”

This apostrophe was addressed to the absent Winklemann.

One inch more, five minutes longer, and the flood would reach the bodies of the old couple. Liz looked round wildly for some mode of delivering them, but looked in vain. Even if her strength had been adequate, there was no higher object in the room to which she could have lifted them. The bed, being a truckle one, and lower than the chairs, was already submerged, and old Liz herself was coolly, if not calmly, seated in two inches of water. At the very last moment deliverance came in an unexpected manner. There was a slight vibration in the timbers of the hut, then a sliding of the whole edifice. This was followed by a snap and a jolt: the ring-bolt or the rope had gone, and old Liz might, with perfect propriety, have exclaimed, in the words of the sea song, “I’m afloat! I’m afloat! and the Rover is free!”

For one moment her heart failed; she had read of Noah’s ark, but had never quite believed in the stability of that mansion. Her want of faith was now rebuked, for the old hut floated admirably, as seamen might say, on an even keel. True, it committed a violent assault on a tree at starting, which sent it spinning round, and went crashing through a mass of drowned bushes, which rendered it again steady; but these mishaps only served to prove the seaworthiness of her ark, and in a few minutes the brave little woman revived. Splashing off the bed and spluttering across the room, she tried to open the door with a view to see what had happened and whither they were bound, for the two windows of the mansion were useless in this respect, being fitted with parchment instead of glass. But the door was fast, and refused to open.

“We’ll a’ be lost!” exclaimed Daddy, in alarm, for he had been awakened by the shock against the tree, and was now slightly alive to their danger.

“Ver is mine boy?” asked the old frau, in a whimpering voice.

“Nae fear o’ ’ee,” said Liz, in a soothing tone. “Him that saved Noah can save us.”

“Open the door an’ see where we are, lassie,” said the old man.

“It’ll no’ open, Daddy.”

“Try the wundy, then.”

“I’m sweer’d to break the wundy,” said Liz. “Losh, man, I’ll try the lum!”

The chimney, to which old Liz referred, was capacious enough to admit a larger frame than hers. Moreover, it was a short one, and the fire had long ago been drowned out. With the enthusiasm of an explorer, the little woman stooped and entered the fireplace. She felt about inside for a few moments, and in doing so brought down an enormous quantity of soot. Immediately there was a tremendous coughing in the chimney.

“Lassie! lassie! come oot! Ve’ll be chokit,” cried Daddy, in alarm.

“Hoots, man, hand yer gab,” was the polite reply.

Liz was not to be easily turned from her purpose. Raising one leg up she found a crevice for her right foot, and the aged couple beheld the old creature, for the first time, in the attitude of a danseuse, standing on one toe. Next moment the remaining leg went up, and she disappeared from view. If there had been any one outside, the old woman would have been seen, two minutes later, to emerge from the chimney-top with the conventional aspect of a demon—as black as a Zulu chief, choking like a chimpanzee with influenza, and her hair blowing freely in the wind. Only those who have intelligently studied the appearance of chimney-sweeps can form a proper idea of her appearance, especially when she recovered breath and smiled, as she thought of her peculiar position.

But that position was one which would have damped the courage of any one except old Liz. The storm was beginning to grow furious; the sun, which had already set, was tingeing the black and threatening clouds with dingy red. Far as the eye could reach, the once green prairie presented an angry sea, whose inky waves were crested and flecked with foam, and the current was drifting the hut away into the abyss of blackness that seemed to gape on the horizon.

“What see ye, Liz?” cried Daddy, bending a little, so as to send his voice up the chimney.

“I see naethin’ but watter; watter everywhere,” said Liz, unconsciously quoting the Ancient Mariner, and bending so as to send her reply down. She did more; she lost her balance, and sent herself down to the bottom of the chimney, where she arrived in a sitting posture with a flop, perhaps we should say a squash, seeing that she alighted in water, which squirted violently all over her sooty person.

This sudden reappearance astonished the aged couple almost more than it surprised Liz herself, for she could not see herself as they saw her.

“Hech! but that was a klyte; but ne’er heed, Daddy. I’m nane the waur. Eh, but I’ll ha’e to clean mysel’,” said old Liz, rising slowly and going straight to a corner cupboard, whence she took a slab of soap, and began to apply it vigorously, using the entire room, so to speak, as a wash-tub. The result was unsatisfactory; beginning the process as a pure black, she only ended it as an impure mulatto, but she was content, and immediately after set herself to fasten the aged pair more securely in their chairs, and to arrange their limbs more comfortably on the table; after that she lighted a candle and sat down on the sloppy bed to watch.

Thus that household spent the night, rocked, as it were, on the cradle of the deep.

At daylight Herr Winklemann rose from his sleepless couch at the parsonage, and finding that the wind had moderated, launched his canoe. He left the mission station just an hour before Mr Cockran returned to it.

Anxious was the heart of the poor youth as he wielded the paddle that morning, and many were the muttered remarks which he made to himself, in German, as he urged the canoe against wind and current. As he neared home his fears increased. On reaching a certain part from which he had been wont to descry the chimney of old Liz’s hut, he perceived that the familiar object was gone, and uttered a mighty roar of horror.

The half-breed in the bow ceased paddling, and looked back in alarm.

“Git on, you brute!” shouted Winklemann, at the same time exerting his great strength as though he meant to urge the light craft out of the water into the air.

A few minutes more and they swept round into the space where the hut had once stood. There was nothing left but the bit of rope that had been made fast to the ring-bolt. Poor Winklemann let his paddle drop and sank almost double with his face in his hands.

“Mine moder,” was all he could say, as he groaned heavily. In a few seconds he recovered with a start and bade the man in the bow paddle for his life.

Winklemann, of course, knew that the house must have floated downwards with the current, if it had not been utterly overwhelmed. He directed his search accordingly, but the breadth of land now covered by the flood caused the currents to vary in an uncertain manner, as every ridge, or knoll, or hollow in the plains modified them. Still, there could be only one general direction. After a few minutes of anxious reflection the bereaved man resolved to keep by the main current of the river. He was unfortunate in this, for the hut, in commencing its adventurous career, had gone off in the direction of the plains. All day he and his companion paddled about in search of the lost family, but in vain. At night they were forced to return to the parsonage for a little food and rest, so as to fit them for a renewal of the search on the following morning.

At the mission station they found Mr Cockran, with his wife and forty of his people, established on the stage. Early in the day the water had burst into the parsonage, and soon stood a foot deep on the floor, so that the pastor deemed it high time to forsake it and take to the last refuge. It was a crowded stage, and great was the anxiety of many of the mothers upon it lest their little ones should be thrust over the edge into the water. No such anxiety troubled the little ones themselves. With that freedom from care which is their high privilege, they even gambolled on the brink of destruction.

Next day was the Sabbath. To go to church was impossible. There were three and a half feet of water in that building. The day was fine, however, and sunny. The pastor, therefore, had service on the stage, and being an earnest, intelligent man, he made good use of the floods and the peculiarity of their circumstances to illustrate and enforce his discourse.

Long before the hour of worship had arrived, however, poor Winklemann went off in his canoe, and spent the whole of that day, as he spent several succeeding days, in anxious, diligent, hopeful, but finally despairing search for his lost old “moder.”