never have happened."

"You don't think it was that!" I said, holding the picture and the chair
while he let himself down to the gang-plank.

"Yes, it was," he replied. "The tide's very high, and the water got over
that hole and rushed in. The water and the wind will finish this old
craft before very long."

And then he took his load from me and dashed down the gang-plank. I went
below to look for Pomona. The lantern still hung on the nail, and I took
it down and went into the kitchen. There was Pomona, dressed, and with
her hat on, quietly packing some things in a basket.

"Come, hurry out of this," I cried. "Don't you know that this
house--this boat, I mean, is a wreck?"

"Yes, sma'am--sir, I mean--I know it, and I suppose we shall soon be at
the mercy of the waves."

"Well, then, go as quickly as you can. What are you putting in that
basket?"

"Food," she said. "We may need it."

I took her by the shoulder and hurried her on deck, over the bulwark,
down the gang-plank, and so on to the place where I had left Euphemia.

I found the dear girl there, quiet and collected, all up in a little
bunch, to shield herself from the wind. I wasted no time, but hurried
the two women over to the house of our milk-merchant. There, with some
difficulty, I roused the good woman, and after seeing Euphemia and
Pomona safely in the house, I left them to tell the tale, and ran back
to the boat.

The boarder was working like a Trojan. He had already a pile of our
furniture on the beach.

I set about helping him, and for an hour we labored at this hasty and
toilsome moving. It was indeed a toilsome business. The floors were
shelving, the stairs leaned over sideways, ever so far, and the
gang-plank was desperately short and steep.

Still, we saved quite a number of household articles. Some things we
broke and some we forgot, and some things were too big to move in this
way; but we did very well, considering the circumstances.

The wind roared, the tide rose, and the boat groaned and creaked. We
were in the kitchen, trying to take the stove apart (the boarder was
sure we could carry it up, if we could get the pipe out and the legs and
doors off), when we heard a crash. We rushed on deck and found that
the garden had fallen in! Making our way as well as we could toward the
gaping rent in the deck, we saw that the turnip-bed had gone down bodily
into the boarder's room. He did not hesitate, but scrambled down his
narrow stairs.