When I
came to, the water had risen. It was now on a level with the tiles. The
roof was a narrow island, emerging from the immense sheet. To the right
and the left the houses must have crumbled.

"We are moving," murmured Rose, who clung to the tiles.

And we all experienced the effect of rolling, as if the roof had
become detached and turned into a raft. The swift currents seemed to be
drifting us away. Then, when we looked at the church clock, immovable
opposite us, the dizziness ceased; we found ourselves in the same place
in the midst of the waves.

Then the water began an attack. Until then the stream had followed the
street; but the debris that encumbered it deflected the course. And when
a drifting object, a beam, came within reach of the current, it seized
it and directed it against the house like a battering-ram. Soon ten, a
dozen, beams were attacking us on all sides. The water roared. Our feet
were spattered with foam. We heard the dull moaning of the house full
of water. There were moments when the attacks became frenzied, when the
beams battered fiercely; and then we thought that the end was near, that
the walls would open and deliver us to the river.

Gaspard had risked himself upon the edge of the roof. He had seized a
rafter and drawn it to him.

"We must defend ourselves," he cried.

Jacques, on his side, had stopped a long pole in its passage. Pierre
helped him. I cursed my age that left me without strength, as feeble as
a child. But the defense was organized--a drill between three men and
a river. Gaspard, holding his beam in readiness, awaited the driftwood
that the current sent against us, and he stopped it a short distance
from the walls. At times the shock was so rude that he fell. Beside him
Jacques and Pierre manipulated the long pole. During nearly an hour that
unending fight continued. And the water retained its tranquil obstinacy,
invincible.

Then Jacques and Pierre succumbed, prostrated; while Gaspard, in a last
violent thrust, had his beam wrested from him by the current. The combat
was useless.

Marie and Veronique had thrown themselves into each other's arms. They
repeated incessantly one phrase--a phrase of terror that I still hear
ringing in my ears:

"I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

Rose put her arms about them. She tried to console them, to reassure
them. And she herself, trembling, raised her face and cried out, in
spite of herself:

"I don't want to die!"