Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me
on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each
other, but from the elements. The other sound I had heard, however,
was quite different, and I listened for it again.

Ah! there it was! And as I bent to the level of the flowing waters and
looked towards its source, I saw a man marooned on one of the hillocks
which the flood had left unsubmerged. Evidently he had seen me first,
for he was waving his hands and making signs with them. He was in keen
alarm about his predicament, but method governed his alarm, and it was
for me to discover it.

Clearly he was a prisoner on the island, in so far that he could not
wade or swim through the roaring dam which divided us. Clearly, also,
the water was rising by miraculous draughts upon the rain, and soon his
refuge would be drowned, and he swept from it. What was to be done by
me to save him, for action must be rapid?

He was beckoning up-stream with a meaning. Searching with my eye the
meeting-place of land and water, I saw what looked like a boat. Where
could it have come from? There had been an old broad-bottomed craft,
used for fording in spate times, on a pool a mile or so up the glen,
and the flood had brought it down and thrown it ashore. Could I get it
afloat, navigate it to the perishing man, and rescue him?

No sooner said than done! Not at all; things don't happen so, at
least, when anything worth doing has to be done. It took me a toilsome
journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water. This I
emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock.
Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a
long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a
guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters might demand.

Thus equipped, out I sailed on that uncharted ocean with never a
thought in my head whether I should again see dry land or riot. The
darkness had deepened, but I could still distinguish the hillock and
the man thereon, now up to his waist in the waters, and for those
fading signs I steered. Quickly I was in the flood race, but I kept my
head, otherwise I should not have heard the voice come to me again in
what seemed to be the words, "Hurry! For God's sake, hurry!"

Down-stream I rushed, here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk,
there avoiding a smash with something else. H