The Red Man's Revenge, Robert Michael Ballantyne [if you liked this book txt] 📗

A couple of planks, laid on two trunks, served for a table. Such cooking utensils and such portions of light furniture as were required had been brought up from the rooms below, that which was left having been weighted with large stones to prevent its being carried away, for the lower doors and windows had been removed to prevent their being driven in or out, as the case might be.

So complete was the destruction everywhere, that Samuel Ravenshaw had passed into a gleeful state of recklessness, and appeared to enjoy the fun of thus roughing it rather than otherwise, to the amusement of his amiable wife, who beheld his wasteful and daring culinary efforts without a murmur, and to the horror of Miss Trim, who was called upon to assist in and share the triumphs as well as the dangers of these efforts.

"Fetch the pepper now, Miss Trim. That's it, thank 'ee.--Hallo! I say, the top has come off that rascally thing, and half the contents have gone into the pan!"

He was engaged in frying a mess of pemmican and flour, of which provender he had secured enough to stand a siege of at least six months' duration.

"Never mind," he continued; "in with more flour and more pemmican. That's your sort. It'll make it taste more like curry, which is hot enough, in all conscience."

"But pepper is not like curry," said Miss Trim, who had a brother in India, and was consequently a secondhand authority on Indian affairs. "Curry is hot, no doubt, and what one may call a seasoning; but it has not the flavour of pepper at all, and is not the colour of it, and--"

"Yes, yes, _I_ know all about that, Miss Trim. Why, there's a box of it, isn't there, in the little cupboard on the stair? I quite forgot it. Fetch it, please, and we'll have real pemmican curry; and rouse up my lazy girls as you pass. Don't disturb Mrs R, though. The proverb says, `Let sleeping'--no, I don't mean _that_ exactly. By the way, don't slip on the stair. The water's about up to that cupboard. Mind, there are six feet water or more in the passage now, and if--"

He stopped, for Miss Trim had already left the room, just as Lambert entered it.

The cupboard to which Miss Trim had been sent was an angular one, let into the wall to utilise a crooked corner. The step of the stair immediately below it was the last dry one of the flight. From that step to the bottom was held by the flood, which gurgled oilily through the deserted basement. Descending to that step with caution, and gazing anxiously at her own image reflected below, she opened the cupboard door.

Now, it chanced that Angus Macdonald's Cochin-China hen, having been driven from its own home by the flood, had strayed into Mr Ravenshaw's house and established itself, uninvited, in the cupboard. It received Miss Trim with a croak of indignation and a flutter. Starting back with a slight, "Oh!" the poor lady fell; and who shall adequately describe, or even imagine, the effects of that fall? Many a time had Miss Trim descended that stair and passage on her feet, but never until then had she done so on her back, like a mermaid or a seal! Coming to the surface immediately, she filled the house with a yell that almost choked the hearers, caused old Ravenshaw to heave the pemmican curry into the lap of Lambert, and induced Lambert himself to leap down-stairs to the rescue like a harlequin. The bold youth had to swim for it! A gurgle at the far end of the passage told where Miss Trim was going down, like wedding announcements, for the third and last time. Lambert went in like an otter, caught the lady in his arms, and bore her to the staircase, and thence to the upper floor in a few minutes. She was at once taken to the sisters' bedroom, and there restored to life and lamentation.

"My dear," said Mr Ravenshaw to his wife when she appeared, "you'd better look after our breakfast--I've made a mess of it, and I'll go over to Angus Macdonald and invite him and his household to come and stay with us. Their house must be almost afloat by this time."

The old gentleman hailed Peegwish, who was outside in the canoe at the moment.

That would-be brewer at once made for the house, paddled his canoe through the doorway and up the passage to the staircase, where Wildcat, who managed the bow paddle, held on by the bannister while Mr Ravenshaw embarked. Reissuing from the doorway, they made for their neighbour's residence.

Macdonald's house had indeed become almost uninhabitable. It stood so deep in the water that only the upper windows were visible. The chimneys and roofs of some of the outhouses formed, with the main building and a few tree-tops, a small Archipelago.

"You are fery kind, Mr Ruvnshaw," said Angus from an upper window, beneath which the canoe floated. "It iss not improbaple that my house will pe goin' down the river like a post, but that iss nothing--not anything at all--when there will pe such a destruction goin' on all over the settlement whatever. It iss fery coot of you, oo ay. I will put my fuddle into the canoe, an' my sister she will pe ready at wance.--Wass you ready, Martha?"

A voice from the interior intimated that Miss Martha would be, "ready in two minutes."

"Pe quick, then," said Macdonald, looking inwards while he lowered his violin, to which he was passionately attached, into the canoe, "you hef not much time to waste, Martha, for it wass time we will pe goin'."

In a few minutes Angus Macdonald's house was abandoned to its fate, and himself and sister, with a couple of domestics, were added to the number of refugees who crowded to the abode of hospitable Sam Ravenshaw.

"Hef you forgotten the cawtie?" asked Angus of his sister, while assisting her to land on the steps from which Miss Trim had taken her dive.

"No, Angus, I've got it in my basket, but I fear the poor old hen has been lost. It's all over the house I sought for it before comin' away, but--"

A triumphant cackle from the cupboard overhead interrupted Miss Martha.

"Ha! ha!" shouted Mr Ravenshaw; "thats where the sound came from this morning! And I do believe it must have been that brute which caused Miss Trim to fall into the water."

With a twinkle in his eye, the old gentleman related the incident of the morning, while Angus, with a grim expression, kept his eye on Beauty, who gazed inquiringly out at the half-open door of her retreat.

"It iss a pad craitur you've peen--fery pad--ever since I got you, but it iss no more mischief you will pe dooin' after this--whatever."

Angus seized the unfortunate hen by the neck as he spoke, and flung it along the passage, where it fell into the water, and went cackling and choking through the doorway.

Beauty's powers were varied as well as surprising. Although thus, for the first time in her life, compelled to take to the water, she swam as well as any duck, and went straight off as if by instinct, to the forsaken house. From the window of the lumber-room Angus saw her reach it, scramble, somehow, on to its roof, and there utter a crow of defiance that would have done credit to her defunct husband. There was one other object besides his own house and surroundings which Angus saw from that window. It was the smoking-box on the willow-clad knoll, which formed a separate island in the flood. The sight stirred up unpleasant recollections. He turned from the window, and gave his attention to the substantial breakfast to which his host invited him.

The greater part of that day was spent in rearranging the habitable parts of Willow Creek, and placing the more delicate valuables further out of danger. At night candles were lighted, fresh wood was heaped up in the stove, and the lumber-room became comparatively comfortable.

"Will you play us a tune, Angus?" said Louis Lambert, drawing a stool between Elsie and Cora and sitting down. "The ladies, you know, never tire of your music."

"I hef not anything new," replied Angus, with becoming modesty; "but if the leddies wass willin' to listen to some o' the old tunes, my fuddle an' I will try what we can do."

"We love the old tunes best," said Cora.

As every one else echoed the sentiment, Angus, nothing loath, began to discourse sweet sounds, which, to say truth, were indeed very sweet, and mingled not inharmoniously with the sound of waters which gurgled gently underneath.

Angus could play Scotch reels in a manner that made dancing almost unavoidable, but he preferred slow, plaintive music, and on this occasion indulged his taste to the full, so as to fling a mantle of quiescence and pathos over the family circle.

Samuel Ravenshaw had retired to a darkish corner to enjoy his pipe, but the music awoke sad memories. The lost Tony came vividly before him, and beside his darling boy arose the dark form of the Red Man, whose mode of taking his revenge had been to him so terrible, all the more terrible that the nature of the old man was secretive in regard to sorrow. His joys he was ever ready to share with every one, but his griefs he smothered in his own breast, and scorned to let his countenance betray his heart.

No one knew how much he suffered. Perhaps Elsie understood him best. At all events she had become more earnest and thoughtful in her attentions after that dark day when her little brother was spirited away. Leaving Lambert to Cora, she went over to her father, sat down beside him, and, laying her head upon his shoulder, listened with a sort of melancholy pleasure to the sweet strains of the violin.

They were suddenly and rudely awakened from this state of quiescence by a blinding flash of lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a tremendous clap of thunder which sounded like colliding worlds overhead, and then rolled away in deep mutterings of discontent. This was repeated at short intervals, then the rain and hail came down in torrents, and the wind rose so that soon the waves began to beat violently on the house. The day which had begun so calmly ended in furious storm--emblematic of many a day in every human life.

Seated there with feelings of awe and anxiety, the Ravenshaw household passed the night in silence.

And still the waters of the Red River continued to rise--slowly, it is true, and inch by inch instead of foot by foot--until these settlers in the great wilderness began to think, with something akin to superstitious fear, of that mighty deluge which had been sent to submerge the world in the days of old.


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.


OLD RAVENSHAW GOES EXPLORING AND RESCUING.

Another fine calm day came to comfort the victims of the flood in the midst of that tempestuous time, with its April character of mingled storm and sunshine. The rise in the water on the previous night had been almost imperceptible. Feeling, therefore, somewhat easier in his mind, old