." He seized me by the arm,
and pushed me toward the tree, which was about a hundred feet away down
the slope at the back, but almost instantaneously a wave of water came
washing and sighing through the forest slowly but surely, and lapped
onward as it swept out from the forest line at a rate which, deliberate
as it seemed, was sufficient for it to reach the big cypress before we
could; and I stopped short appalled and looked round for a place of
refuge.

The water came on, and in another minute would have been up to where we
stood, but it shrank back again toward the forest, and I felt that the
danger was over, when to my great delight I heard a shout, the splashing
of some one running through water, and my father came into sight to run
up the slope to the place where we stood, closely followed by Morgan,
and both at first too much exhausted to speak.

"Thank God!" he cried at last. "Don't speak. Flood. The settlement
deep in water. Rising fast. The boat?"

"Wash away, massa," cried Pomp.

"Ah!" cried my father, despairingly. "Quick, all of you. It is coming
now."

As he spoke I heard the deep roar increasing, and after a glance round,
my father pointed to the tree.

"We must get up into that. No: too late."

For the flood came in a great, smooth, swelling wave out from the edge
of the forest, and then glided toward us, rising rapidly up the slope.

"I'm with you," cried my father, and catching Sarah by the hand, he
dragged her into the house, seized the rough ladder, and made her climb
up silent and trembling into the loft, where, before we could join her,
the water was over the doorsteps and had risen to our knees.

But the moment Sarah was in the loft, my father ordered Pomp and me to
follow, then Hannibal and Morgan, coming up last himself, by which time
the water was up to his waist.

As soon as he was in the little low loft, my father forced out the
wooden bars across one of the windows and looked out, to take in the
extent of our danger, and I pressed close to his side.

"Is there any danger?" I said, rather huskily.

"I hope not, my boy," he said, sadly. "The question is whether the
house will be swept right away. Everything depends upon whether it
comes with a fierce rash, or rises slowly."

I looked round and could see that the flood kept coming in little swells
or waves from the edge of the forest, the water rushing out from among
the tall trunks, and then seeming to undulate gent