Part 126 (1/2)

He then made Grace promise to go to bed at once, and to lie within blankets. She didn't like that idea, but consented. ”It is my duty to obey you now in every thing,” said she.

Henry left her, and ran down to the Town Hall.

He was in that glorious state of bliss in which n.o.ble minds long to do good actions; and the obvious thing to do was to go and comfort the living survivors of the terrible disaster he had so narrowly escaped.

He found but one policeman there; the rest, and Ransome at their head, were doing their best; all but two, drowned on their beat in the very town of Hillsborough.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Round a great fire in the Town Hall were huddled a number of half-naked creatures, who had been driven out of their dilapidated homes; some of them had seen children or relatives perish in the flood they had themselves so narrowly escaped, and were bemoaning them with chattering teeth.

Little spoke them a word of comfort, promised them all clothes as soon as the shops should open, and hurried off to the lower part of the town in search of Ransome.

He soon found the line the flood had taken. Between Poma Bridge and Hillsborough it had wasted itself considerably in a broad valley, but still it had gone clean through Hillsborough twelve feet high, demolis.h.i.+ng and drowning. Its terrible progress was marked by a layer of mud a foot thick, dotted with rocks, trees, wrecks of houses, machinery, furniture, barrels, mattresses, carca.s.ses of animals, and dead bodies, most of them stark naked, the raging flood having torn their clothes off their backs.

Four corpses and two dead horses were lying in a lake of mud about the very door of the railway station; three of them were females in absolute nudity. The fourth was a male, with one stocking on. This proved to be Hillsbro' Harry, warned in vain up at Damflask. When he actually heard the flood come hissing, he had decided, on the whole, to dress, and had got the length of that one stocking, when the flying lake cut short his vegetation.

Not far from this, Little found Ransome, working like a horse, with the tear in his eyes.

He uttered a shout of delight and surprise, and, taking Little by both shoulders, gazed earnestly at him, and said, ”Can this be a living man I see?”

”Yes, I am alive,” said Little, ”but I had to work for it: feel my clothes.”

”Why, the are dryer than mine.”

”Ay; yet have been in water to the throat; the heat of my body and my great exertions dried them. I'll tell you all another day: now show me how to do a bit of good; for it is not one nor two thousand pounds I'll stick at, this night.”

”Come on.”

Strange sights they saw that night.

They found a dead body curled round the top frame of a lamppost, and, in the suburbs, another jammed between a beam and the wall of a house.

They found some houses with the front wall carried clean away, and, on the second floor, such of the inmates as had survived huddled together in their night-clothes, unable to get down. These, Ransome and his men speedily relieved from their situation.

And now came in word that the whole village of Poma Bridge had been destroyed.

Little, with Ransome and his men, hurried on at these sad tidings as fast as the mud and ruins would allow, and, on the way, one of the policemen trod on something soft. It was the body of a woman imbedded in the mud.

A little further they saw, at some distance, two cottages in a row, both gutted and emptied. An old man was alone in one, seated on the ground-floor in the deep mud.

They went to him, and asked what they could do for him.

”Do? Why let me die,” he said.

They tried to encourage him; but he answered them in words that showed how deeply old Shylock's speech is founded in nature:

”Let the water take me--it has taken all I had.”