"There, now," he said; "if there's going to be a big flood in the creek2 I'm going down to see it, rain or no rain. There's no telling how high it'll rise if this pour keeps on long enough. It rattles3 on the roof like buckshot!"
"That's the end of the old tavern," said Jack to Mary, as he stood in the front room looking out.
He was barefooted, and had come so silently that she was startled.
"Jack!" she exclaimed, turning around, "they might have all been killed when the steeple came down. I heard what Joe Hawkins said, and I led out the class."
"Good for Joe!" said Jack. "We need a new meeting-house, any way. I heard the elder say so. Less steeple, next time, and more church!"
"I'd like to see a real big church," said Mary,—"a city church."
"You'd like to go to the city as much as I would," said Jack.
"Yes, I would," she replied emphatically. "Just you get there and I'll come afterward4, if I can. I've been studying twice as hard since I left the academy, but I don't know why."
"I know it," said Jack; "but I've had no time for books."
"Jack! Molly!" the voice of Aunt Melinda came up the stairway. "Are you ever coming down-stairs?"
"What will the elder say to my coming down barefoot?" said Jack; "but I don't want shoes if I'm going out into the mud."
"He won't care at such a time as this," said Mary. "Let's go."
It was not yet supper-time, but it was almost dark enough to light the lamps. Jack felt better satisfied about his appearance when he found how dark and shadowy the parlor5 was; and he felt still better when he saw his father dressed as if he were going over to work at the forge, all but the leather apron6.
The elder did not seem disturbed. He and Mr. Murdoch were talking about all sorts of great disasters, and Mary did not know just when she was drawn7 into the talk, or how she came to acknowledge having read about so many different things all over the world.
"Jack," whispered his mother, at last, "you'll have to go to the barn and gather eggs, or we sha'n't have enough for supper."
"I'll bring the eggs if I don't get drowned before I get back," said Jack; and he found a basket and an umbrella and set out.
He took advantage of a little lull8 in the rain, and ran to the barn-yard gate.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll have to wade9. Why it's nearly a foot deep! There'll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie. Isn't this jolly?"
The rain pattered on the roof as if it had been the head of a drum. If the house was gloomy, the old barn was darker and gloomier. Jack turned over a half-bushel measure and sat down on it.
"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay in Crofield."
He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues10, exclaiming: "I'll go and see the freshet, anyhow!"
He carried the eggs into the house.
All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy.
"I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn't like it when they found it out."
The gutter11 in front of the house had now become a small torrent12.
"All the other gutters13 are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks14 all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"
"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek."
"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's looking."
"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.
"There's a big dam up at Four Corners," said the blacksmith. "If anything should happen there, we'd have trouble here, and you'd have it in Mertonville, too."
Jack heard that as he was going out of the door. He carried an umbrella; but the first thing he noticed was that the force of the rain seemed to have slackened as soon as he was out of doors. It was now more like mist or a warm sleet15, as if Crofield were drifting through a cloud.
"The Washington House needs all the rain it can get," said Jack, as he went along; "but half the roof is caved in. I'm glad Livermore's insured."
When Jack reached the creek he felt his heart fairly jump with excitement. The Cocahutchie was no longer a thin ribbon rippling16 along in a wide stretch of sand and gravel17. It was a turbid18, swollen19, roaring flood, already filling all the space under its bridge; and the clump21 of old trees was in the water instead of on dry land.
"Hurrah22!" shouted Jack. "As high as that already, and the worst is to come!"
He could not see the dam at first, but the gusts23 of wind were making openings in the mist, and he soon caught glimpses of a great sheet of foaming25 brown water.
"I'll go and take a look at the dam," he said; and he ran to the mill.
"It's just level with the dam," he said, after one swift glance. "I never thought of that. I must go and tell old Hammond what's coming."
The miller26's house was not far away, and he and his family were at supper when there came a bang at the door. Then it opened and Mrs. Hammond exclaimed:
"Why, John Ogden!"
"I'm out o' breath," said Jack excitedly. "You tell him that the water's 'most up to the lower floor of the mill. If he's got anything there that'd be hurt by getting wet—"
"Goodness, yes!" shouted the miller, getting up from the table, "enough to ruin me. There are sacks of flour, meal, grain,—all sorts of stuff. It must all go up to the second floor. I'll call all the hands."
"But," said his wife, "it's Sunday!"
"Can't help it!" he exclaimed; "the Cocahutchie's coming right up into the mill. Jack, tell every man you see that I want him!"
Off went Jack homeward, but he spoke27 to half a dozen men on the way. He did not run, but he went quickly enough; and when he reached the house there was something waiting for him.
It was a horse with a blanket strapped28 on instead of a saddle; and by it stood his father, and near him stood his mother and Aunt Melinda and Mary, bareheaded, for it was not raining, now.
"Mount, Jack," said the blacksmith quietly. "I've seen the creek. It's only four and a half miles to the Four Corners. Ride fast. See how that dam looks and come back and tell me. Mr. Murdoch will have his buggy ready to start when you get back. See how many logs there are in the saw-mill boom."
"Oh, Jack!" exclaimed Mary, in a low suppressed voice. "I wish that I were you! It's a great day for you!"
He had sprung to the saddle while his father was speaking, and he felt it was out of his power to utter a word in reply. He did not need to speak to the horse, for the moment Mr. Ogden released the bit there was a quick bound forward.
"This horse is ready to go," said Jack to himself, as he felt that motion. "I've seen her before. I wonder what's made her so excited?"
There was no need for wonder. The trim, light-limbed sorrel mare29 he was riding had been kept in the hotel stables until that day. She had been taken out to a neighboring stable, at the morning alarm of fire, and when the blacksmith went to borrow her he found her laboring30 under a strong impression that things in Crofield were going wrong. She was therefore inclined to go fast, and all that Jack had to do was to hold her in. The blacksmith's son was at home in the saddle. It was not yet dark, and he knew the road to the Four Corners. It was a muddy road, and there was a little stream of water along each side of it. Spattered and splashed from head to foot were rider and horse, but the miles vanished rapidly and the Four Corners was reached.
A smaller village than Crofield, further up among the hills, it had a higher dam, a three times larger pond, a bigger grist-mill, and a large saw-mill. That was because there were forests of timbers among the yet higher hills beyond, and Mr. Ogden had been thinking seriously about the logs from those forests.
"I know what father means," said Jack aloud, as he galloped31 into the village.
There were hardly any people stirring about its one long street; but there was a reason for that and Jack found out what it was when he pulled up near the mill.
"Everybody has come to watch the dam," he exclaimed. "No use asking about the logs, though; there they are."
The crowd was evidently excited, and the air was filled with shouts and answers.
"The boom got unhitched and swung round 'cross the dam," said one eager speaker; "and there's all the logs, now,—hundreds on 'em,—just a-pilin' up and a-heapin' up on the dam; and when that breaks, the dam'll go, mill and all, bridge and all, and the valley below'll be flooded!"
The moon was up, and the clouds which had hidden it were breaking away as Jack looked at the threatening spectacle before him.
The sorrel mare was tugging32 hard at the rein33 and pawing the mud under her feet, while Jack listened to the talk.
"Stand it? No!" he heard a man say. "That dam wasn't built to stand any such crowdin' as that. Hark!"
A groaning34, straining, cracking sound came from the barrier behind which the foaming flood was widening and deepening the pond.
"There it goes! It's breaking!"
Jack wheeled the sorrel, as a dull, thunderous report was answered by a great cry from the crowd; and then he dashed away down the homeward road.
"I must get to Crofield before the water does," he said. "Glad the creek's so crooked35; it has twice as far to travel as I have."
Not quite, considering how a flood will sweep over a bend instead of following it. Still, Jack and the sorrel had the start, and nearly all the way it was a downhill road.
The Crofield people gathered fast, after the sky cleared, for a rumor36 went around that there was something wrong with the dam, and that a man had gone to the Four Comers to warn the people there.
All the men that could crowd into the mill had helped Mr. Hammond get his grain up into the second story, but the water was a hand-breadth deep on the lower floor by the time it was done.
There came a moment when all was silent except the roar of the water, and through that silence the thud of hoofs37 was heard coming down from Main Street. Then a shrill38, excited voice shouted:
"All of you get off that bridge! The Four Corners dam's gone. The boom's broken, and the logs are coming!"
There was a tumult39 of questioning, as men gathered around the sorrel, and there was a swift clearing of people from the bridge.
"Why, it's shaking now!" said the blacksmith to Mr. Murdoch. "It'll go down with the first log that strikes it. You drive your best home to Mertonville and warn them. You may be just in time."
Away went the editor, carrying with him an extraordinary treasure of news for the next number of his journal. Jack dismounted, and her owner took the sorrel to her stable; she was very muddy but none the worse for the service she had rendered.
The crowd stood waiting for what was sure to come. Miller Hammond was anxiously watching his threatened and already damaged property. Jack came and stood beside him.
"Mr. Hammond," he said, "all the gravel that you were going to sell to father is lying under water."
"More than two acres of it," said the miller. "The water'll run off, though. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. I'll sell it for two hundred dollars, considering the flood."
"If father'll take it, will you count in the fifty you said you owed me?" inquired Jack.
The miller made a wry40 face for a moment, but then responded, smiling:
"Well! After what you've done to-night, too: saved all there was on the first floor,—yes, I will. Tell him I'll do it."
They all turned suddenly toward the dam. A high ridge20 of water was sweeping41 down across the pond. It carried a crest42 of foam24, logs, planks43, and rubbish, shining white in the moonlight, and it rolled on toward the mill and the dam as if it had an errand.
Crash—roar—crash—and a plunging44 sound,—and it seemed as if the Crofield dam had vanished. But it had not. Only a section of its top work, in the middle, had been knocked away by the rushing stroke of those logs.
A frightened shout went up from the spectators, and it had hardly died away before there followed another splintering crash.
"The bridge!" shouted Jack.
The frail45 supports of the bridge, brittle46 with age and weather, already straining hard against the furious water, needed only the battering47 of the first heavy logs from the boom, and down they went.
"Gone!" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "The hotel's gone, and the meeting-house, and the dam, and the bridge. There won't be anything left of Crofield, at this rate."
"I'm going to get out of it," said Jack.
"I'll never refuse you again," replied his father, with energy. "You may get out any way you can, and take your chances anywhere you please. I won't stand in your way."
The roar of the surging Cocahutchie was the only sound heard for a full minute, and then the miller spoke.
"The mill's safe," he said, with a very long breath of relief; "the breaking of that hole in the dam let the water and logs through, and the pond isn't rising. Hurrah!"
There was a very faint and scattering48 cheer, and Jack Ogden did not join in it. He had turned suddenly and walked away homeward, along the narrow strip of land that remained between the wide, swollen Cocahutchie and the fence.
At the end of the fence, where he came into his own street, away above where the head of the bridge had been, there was a large gathering49. That around the mill had been nearly all of men and boys. Here were women and girls, and the smaller boys, whose mothers and aunts held them and kept them from going nearer the water. Jack found it of no use to say, "Oh, mother, I'm too muddy!" She didn't care how muddy he was, and Aunt Melinda cared even less, apparently50. Bessie and Sue had evidently been crying; but Mary had not; and it was her hand on Jack's arm that led him away, up the street, toward their gate.
"Oh, Jack!" she exclaimed, "I'm so proud! Did you ride fast? I'm glad I can ride! I could have done it, too. It was splendid!"
"Molly," said Jack, "I don't mind telling you. The sorrel mare galloped all the way, going and coming, up hill and down; and Molly, I kept wishing and thinking every jump she gave,—wishing I was galloping51 to New York, instead of to the Four Corners!
"Molly," he added quickly, "father gives it up and says I may go!"
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1
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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2
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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rattles
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| （使）发出格格的响声， （使）作嘎嘎声( rattle的第三人称单数 )； 喋喋不休地说话； 迅速而嘎嘎作响地移动，堕下或走动； 使紧张，使恐惧 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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7
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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9
wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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10
blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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11
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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13
gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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14
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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15
sleet
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| n.雨雪；v.下雨雪，下冰雹 | |
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rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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18
turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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hurrah
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| int.好哇，万岁，乌拉 | |
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23
gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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28
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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29
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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31
galloped
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| （使马）飞奔，奔驰( gallop的过去式和过去分词 )； 快速做[说]某事 | |
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32
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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34
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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36
rumor
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| n.谣言，谣传，传说 | |
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37
hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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38
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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40
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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41
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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42
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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43
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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44
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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45
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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46
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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47
battering
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| n.用坏，损坏v.连续猛击( batter的现在分词 ) | |
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48
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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49
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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50
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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51
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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