this pancake batter made, for I'm dead
tired. We will hear the particulars of the wreck at breakfast," replied
Mary.

"Poor things! How I pity them. What an awful experience for women if
there were any on board," said sympathetic Ricka, and I left them
talking it over, to roll into my cot, weary from twelve hours of hard
work and excitement.

No anxiety, and no thundering of the breakers could now keep me awake,
and for hours I slept heavily.

Suddenly I was wide awake. No dream or unusual sound had roused me. Some
new danger must be impending. My pulses throbbed. The clock at the head
of my cot ticked regularly, and its hands pointed to four. The sisters
slept peacefully side by side. The whole town seemed resting after the
intense and continued anxiety caused by the storm, and I wondered why I
had wakened.

However, something impelled me to get up, and, rising quietly from my
cot in order not to arouse the others, I went to the south window and
peered out.

My heart fairly stood still.

The waters were upon us! They had already covered the lower steps at the
door not six feet from the cot on which I had slept. I stood motionless.
If I knew that the waters were receding, I would go quietly to bed,
allowing the others to sleep an hour longer; but if they were rising
there was no time to lose. None could reckon on the tides now, for all
previous records had been recently broken. I would wait and watch a few
minutes, I decided, and I wrapped a blanket around me, for my teeth
chattered, and I shivered.

How cruel the water looked as I watched it creep closer and closer. How
quietly now it swept at flood tide up through the piles under the
warehouse, covering the little back yard and the kitchen steps of the
restaurant. With the cunning of a thief it was creeping upon us in the
darkness when we were asleep and helpless.

Would the resistless waters persist in our destruction? Where should we
go in the storm if obliged to fly for our lives?

Twenty minutes passed.

Another step was covered while I watched--the tide was rising.

Crossing the room now to where my friends lay sleeping, I touched little
sister upon the shoulder.

"Wake up! Wake up! The tide is coming,--the water is almost at the door!
I have been watching it for twenty minutes, and I'm sure we ought to be
dressed," said I, trying to keep my voice steady so as neither to betray
my fright nor startle them unnecessarily.

Springing from their bed